Miranda Holmes

A Surface is a Container of Everything that Already Happened, 2022

Tree branch wrapped in canvas string discards with water-based paint

Miranda Holmes (b. 1994) is an artist currently living in Columbus, Ohio. Through drawing and painting, Holmes explores the ways in which people change, including how cultural environments shift our behaviors over time. In her paintings, past iterations of subjects and compositions remain visible alongside more opaque areas of the work. These residues of the work’s past shine through transparent layers as evidence of how the painting evolved.

Holmes sees her artistic practice as a way to observe how we move and are moved by those around us. In addition to drawing and painting, her project at GlogauAIR consists of participating in free workshops around Berlin. She will offer her own collaborative drawing workshop at the end of the residency.

Drawing from photos of everyday life, Holmes plays the line between representation and abstraction in her depictions of femme-presenting bodies. Often, her paintings show fragments of recognizable bodies, environments, and objects alongside areas of abstraction that play with color, line, and shape. Holmes’ multiple approaches to painting re-presents femme bodies as holders of experiences and memories, textured and inflected by the space and people around them. Her work observes what shapes subdue or strengthen over time and provokes questions of what could have been otherwise.

The showcase features a diorama meant to deconstruct the layers of paint that Holmes applies in her process. The different materials and fabrics represent the multiple layers of transparent paint she uses to build up texture and depth in her work. The installation simulates looking through the surface of one of her paintings.

You’ll be able to see more of Miranda Holmes’ work during our upcoming Open Studios on 16th and 17th of December!