Today we’d like to introduce you to Christine Holton.
Hi Christine, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I am a Durham, North Carolina native and have watched my city expand and grow. Like Durham, I began life as someone else’s creation, vision and idea. I was an observer of minute details from a young age, often drawing small parts of plants, automobiles, and animals. I was interested in observing environments and creatures from a very young age. I would often sit in one place and just watch and observe all of the tiny happenings and changes in outdoor spaces over a period of hours. I was a very physically active kid, yet I would stop and watch leaves transform and flowers lose petals, checking back to chart progress over days, paying special attention to seasonal changes. The point of that stillness is to really learn to look at the world around me.
I Is struggled with addiction in my twenties and thirties. Eventually finding and accepting help, growing in wellness with others instead of trying to go it alone informs my work today, especially in the most recent themes of human anatomy. These living systems are so similar and universal, yet unique in functionality sometimes. The acceptance of my own body is explored through the use of bright color and texture, depicting what I see as healthy and healing subjects.
Today, I am a professional teaching artist based in Durham, NC. Currently, I teach classes and camps as an Art Specialist at the Levin Jewish Community Center in Durham. I am also an art instructor at Artpost, leading private or group art lessons, workshops, and professional consultation for artists and teachers in person and on the Zoom platform. I provide these services for locals and clients around the US and internationally.
I love to create pet portrait commissions and original art for personal spaces and gifts, enjoying creating work that fills a need and brings pleasure. I am inspired by the natural, living world; hiking, gardening, and moving in the sunlight. Many of the forms that appear in my work are borrowed from nature, which embodies the origins of sacred geometric patterns.
I love caring for and observing animals, especially dogs, and am a supporter of the Animal Protection Society of Durham, supporting them through the sales of some of my work.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I grew up in a very supportive and nurturing home while being an extremely sensitive young person.
I was challenged at age 17 by an eating disorder after having surgery that changed my diet and body. I struggled with it for 15 years, experiencing shame and guilt for the inability to “be normal” before seeking help for it once I found I could not get healthy on my own. The shame of those years kept me in a place of being too proud to ask for help and get treatment.
The secrecy of struggle is a condition that is defeated by daily practice, connection with other artists and friends, and offering help to others who have also experienced these challenges.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My paintings and drawings explore the symbology, purpose, and functions of living things. They are portraits meant to celebrate and venerate living systems for their beauty, unique traits, characteristics, ancient designs, and meaning. I am interested in branch-like forms, patterns, and symmetry found in the human anatomy, symbols of nature such as the tree, and animals. I’m fascinated by and in awe of these living systems, their functions, and their energies, my own human organs included.
I celebrate my subjects using bright colors to bring attention to them and to add fantasy. Lively, painterly brushstrokes exaggerate their movement and vitality, while up-close views, intentional compositions, and abstracted or fantasy-like environments help viewers to find enchantment and draw their attention to the beauty of the living object itself.
I work with human anatomical subjects currently, creating bright, bold work with highly textured backgrounds and surrounding space. Each piece is visually unforgettable, as I bring forward a living part of us that deserves a spotlight. I have thought much more intently about parts of my own anatomy as I have painted these subjects, taking them less for granted while intentionally seeking healing and celebrating them as a part of my vessel in this life.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
I am committed to now creating paintings depicting living systems in humans of a range of sexualities and transitional bodies. The goal is to create bright and bold, joyous paintings on a large scale that feature the beautiful complexity of human anatomy within us all (for example, a Trans person’s anatomical heart side by side with a Cis-gender person’s anatomical heart.
The same with kidneys, intestines, liver, and to a cellular level and depiction). This is not to show how ALL our hardships are equal and the same, but to open up an awareness of unity with how we can honor and recognize each other in full acceptance. This process is in part
an expression of grief for disconnection due to trauma with my own body and health during what feels like the prime years of youth, even today as a cis-person while accepting myself and caring for my body and learning.
The feeling of loss and of coming home that exists in a body as it recovers from trauma or massive change is a physical, emotional, and spiritual process. Reverence of the grieving process as a vital part of healing is expressed by painting portraits of living systems in colorful palettes to express joyousness in a new unity within the self.
Contact Info:
- Email: christineholton777@gmail.com
- Website: www.christineholtonfineart.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christineholtonstudioart/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100005126206439
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChMEvIaFQcoAY6XTDoaVTrA
Image Credits
Hillman Han and Sarah Glickman
