These days, after dropping her two young children at school, Hollie runs down to the shed nestled in her back garden behind the mandarin and oranges trees, turns up the music (very important) and gets busy making. Hollie’s work incorporates the use of various mediums including ceramics, textiles, gouache and acrylics and collage, to name a few. Ever the bowerbird, Hollie also seeks to find preloved and recycled materials and objects to use in her work, often rummaging the recycling pile or browsing local op-shops. Despite the various mediums employed, unifying visual themes of colour, pattern and texture are found in Hollie’s work.

Writing is also an integral part of Hollie’s art practice and she begins each day in her studio with 20 or so minutes free writing. This practice helps to navigate past the mental noisiness of the mundane and reveal the core thoughts, feelings and observations of the day; the deeper why behind the making.

Through Hollie’s work she explores memory, emotion, story telling, human understanding and connectedness.

In 2023 Hollie undertook two artist residencies. First a three week residency in the Mungga Artist Studios at the Ivanhoe Library and Cultural Hub alongside the Going Deeper group exhibition and later a month long residency in the ArtCubes, funded by the South Gippsland Shire, in the idyllic Gippsland town of Loch.

Between 2019 and 2023, Hollie worked in collaboration with award winning local photographer Kristy Visscher of Kinship by Kristy painting small abstract acrylic works that were gifted to Kristy’s wedding photography clients. Each painting was unique and inspired by the colours, flowers and setting of each couple’s wedding as shown in Kristy’s amazing photography.

Easter 2022, Hollie designed and illustrated a colouring in competition page for the Yarragon Good Friday Appeal (more information on this can be found under the ‘Illustration’ tab on the Made page).

You can see more of Hollie’s work on Instagram and read her intermittent ramblings on Substack.