Dreaming in Cyan with Holly Troy
Collection of Abstract Oil Paintings and the Reflection of Blue.

Events
Exhibiting | October 1 - 30th, 2021
Pre-Sale | Online 10% off only, September 30th, 3pm PST
Virtual Opening | Friday, October 1st, 5:30pm PST, Facebook Live
Opening Reception | Friday, October 1st, 6:00-9:00pm PST
Artist talk on Instagram Live @the_heartbox, October 14th, 3pm PST

Exhibition Statement
“I know you are able to paint figuratively, why are your paintings abstract?”

Where I don’t have words or music - I have colors, shapes, movement, and layers. Painting is one of the ways in which I synthesize, integrate, and share the stories of my life – especially stories that are not yet verbal, or that have no need to be verbal. They are the tails of dream fragments, the distinct visceral feeling of a hazy memory, the heat and tingle of a whisper. 

The predominant color in all of my paintings is Phthalocyanine Blue. I remember in college, discovering this blue – it’s strength, warmth, and vibrancy. How easily it spread, the tiniest amount going a long way. Blue as expansive, permeating, and powerful sent hot shivers down my spine. 

Before my breakthrough, I thought of blue as soft, cool, passive, and delicate – a color that could easily fade and be lost. No more! That day transformed my understanding and my relationship with the power of blue.

Cyan is potent; it’s like rich butter. It’s a delicious color to melt into, to play with. 

Cyan changed the way I look at other blues: cerulean, cobalt, indigo, azure, turquoise, cornflower, sapphire, aquamarine, lapis, and periwinkle. I see life, a shimmer, a glow. 

Cyan reminds me of childhood early summer, the semi-annual painting of my grandfather’s swimming pool. Rolling the paint out on concrete, smelling the enamel, flooding my eyes with dazzling brightness. Summers swimming, floating, surrounded by blue. Days dreaming until shadows grew long, disappearing in the half-light.

Blue is everywhere – the sky, the ocean, gemstones, the center of a candle flame. 

The vibration of blue gently trickles into my work and psyche, healing the experience of collective and personal grief and trauma. Sometimes blue is there to smooth the sharp edge of homesickness for the life I left in New York City – my friends, the pace, the hum and buzz of so much collective creativity. Sometimes it feels like blue comes in and holds sorrow, lets it be what it needs to be.

Blue resonates joy and possibility and innocence.

This is the color I vibrate with. Blue permeates me. If I were to radiate a color, it would be cyan blue. It is the color of dreams, of hope, of joyful song, of new beginnings.

Blue is a new day, a new chance, a place to start over. 

Blue is nothingness and everything, the endless unspeakable moment of pure potential.

Holly Troy explores the edges of shift and change through art and creative process. She believes a good life is about growth and curiosity, with a healthy dose of risk, fun, flexibility, and imagination. After a lifetime of various occupations, from waitress to colon hydro-therapist to project manager, Holly left the work-a-day world in 2019 to devote herself to the arts. “I have always had jobs in order to afford my projects. I’m a stellar employee, and yet, I didn’t want to be stuck in a dead-end career making somebody else rich while shutting myself down and using up my creative capabilities.” Holly says, “I wanted to make art.”

So far, that choice has paid off. “Once I decided to be an artist, I became one. Sounds simple, but the decision was decades in the making.  I discovered the world really does meet you with your ideas about yourself and what is possible for your life.”

Holly has a degree in art and creative writing from the City University of New York at Hunter College. She is a painter; a lifelong performer, musician, and producer with an extensive discography; and, an award-winning poet. Holly has an international following, her work can be found throughout the world. 

I developed this series as a way to celebrate the unessential. Things that at one time brought joy might now collect dust. Our lives are fluid and the things we spend our lives with need to be fluid along with us. Over the one hundred days of the series, I stood at my easel in meditation while painting the stuff that no longer serve my needs.  Memories of experiences with each object whirl around each painting in this series. It is time to pass on the (un)essential in order to continue its story.

A story about a time I got lost in blue

Cigarette dangling from her mouth
Bunny opened the door.
I thought she was cool.
Bunny was an enormous woman.

Bunny opened the door and grinned.
Her trailer had a dark heady smell.
Enormous, Bunny wore a strapless shiny polyester cheetah print jumpsuit,
gold high heels, gold hoop earrings, and gold bangles.

Her trailer smelled dark, heady, secret.
I wanted to go in, but M’s mother made us wait outside.
I told M I wanted gold high heels and that I couldn’t wait to get my ears pierced.
We poked sticks in the mud and pretended to be Davey and Mike, our favorite Monkees.

I wanted to see the mysterious darkness inside.
Dimly, we heard David Bowie singing about outer space.
We drew stars and moons in the mud,
stopped talking and listened—

We heard him cry – 5 years, that’s all we’ve got!
My head spun, that’s almost my whole life.
We stopped talking. For a minute
my stick, the stars, the mud and M disappeared.

The world spun and I was in the sky looking at my life.
I saw nothing but endless blue
no stick, no stars, no mud, no M, just blue—

and it was beautiful.

I saw something push through the edge of blue
when the smell of Bunny’s trailer hit me.
It was beautiful.
Glimmering purple haloed her eyes,

Bunny carried the smell of her trailer
when she stepped outside into the afternoon sun.
Shimmering eyes squinting,
she lit the cigarette dangling from her mouth.

©2003 Holly Troy