Michelle Hold’s intensely colored abstract paintings masterfully layer texture and treatment to create compositions that depend as much on their tactility as on their visual features to communicate. Though Hold’s hand is evident all over the canvas, her brushstroke never becomes repetitive or predictable; its momentum and shape manages to define the organization of the painting while veering between long and short, splatter and scrape, purposeful and hurried. The artist pairs her forceful strokes with a blocked approach to color, lacing her paintings with strength and a bold vigor.
Hold, who among other things studied architecture and textiles in a number of European cities as well as Hong Kong, describes herself as “not interested in what you see but in what you cannot see. Looking at my paintings should bring you to experience something new.” Her materials of choice include acrylic paint, pigment and sand, and many paintings begin their lives as paper collages before Hold switches over. The final product is a swirl of energies that ultimately achieves a remarkable harmony.