Loie Hollowell
Squeezed Cheeks, 2019
Oil paint, acrylic medium, sawdust, high density foam on linen over panel
71.1 x 53.3 x 5.4 cm
'One opening leads to another.' That was the suggestive name of Loie Hollowell’s 2019 solo exhibition at GRIMM Gallery in Amsterdam, where this painting was first shown. Put together with the term Squeezed Cheeks, the references to bodies and sexuality becomes immediately apparent, despite the abstract nature of Hollowell’s paintings. Through this abstraction, she creates somewhat hypnotic shapes with a nod to the style of Georgia O’Keeffe, imbuing her works with a similar air of femininity and spirituality.
Squeezed Cheeks is part of a series of paintings that draw from her experience of giving birth, touching on the emotional and psychological metamorphosis during pregnancy and labour. She describes her work as abstracted self-portraits, relating to her own body and personal experiences.
Her work of this period is characterised by a geometric strictness in the composition, but great complexity in texture, depth and gradient. Hollowell achieves this by adding miniature brush strokes on top of the panel, which protrudes from the wall due to a layer of foam. Working with colour and light, it looks like the two disc shapes or (bum) cheeks are indeed squeezed in towards the midline, whilst the linen and sawdust seem to subtly allude to veins, pores and hairs.