'A Secret Life' a solo exhibition by Holly Terry

Over the course of the last seven years, this practice of making has taken an evolution of sorts, more so than ever, tuning into the finest energetic shifts within me, growing alongside me as I move through life that I think, is becoming more in-tune with self.

I’d like to think of it as developing a comfortable relationship with self, whether I am particularly happy or not, at any given time. ‘A Secret Life’ places emphasis on the internal dialogue between self and material, an internal response to my external world.

What I find interesting about the process in which these works were made is the fact that my memory fails me regarding the process – I simply cannot tell you how they came to be, or when. In hindsight, of course, these works hold significant personal meaning and resonance – they are, in fact, direct response to the world I live in, on both a grand scale and a micro scale, a response to the emotional challenges and comforts of life itself. 

 Whilst ‘A Secret Life’ is brimmed with significance personally (always understood after-the-fact), visually represented within recurring motifs, words hidden beneath layers of paint or titles themselves, I continue to place emphasis on sharing energetic frequency.

My paintings aren’t about verbal dialogue; how can they be? In honesty, I don’t think they ever really have been. My interest lies in a viewer’s relationship with the work - what the viewer takes from the paintings. How they feel, what they feel, perhaps most significantly why they feel it. I continue to explore the way in which visual language can evoke emotion, meaning, message.  

 Something so riddled with verbal language, sparked from a tangible object, so clearly without it.