Tania Holzli

My work in painting, printmaking, and sculpture is an exploration of infections within a system. I have explored themes about the threat to our environment by anthropogenic pollution, our bodies and illness through my own experience with cancer and treatment. My work explores pattern and texture in the environment with a focus on the changes humans impose on nature and the planet. My paintings are an analysis into the conflict between the rigid repetitive patterns made by man and the soft organic shapes of nature. I fill my under-painting with repetitive static patterns in vibrant colors and then paint over the patterning with natural brushstrokes allowing some of the artificial shapes and colors to show through demonstrating the conflict between the inflexible patterns of man and the soft natural organic shapes of nature.

Most recently I have been examining the dynamics of a crowd and the difference between individual identity and the anonymity of a group. My work with crowds involves protest and social movement. I am interested in the visual of the compression of people in one place working for a group instead of an individual.

These themes are different but connected through this look at infections within systems such as climate change, cancer within my own body, the act of protest in democracy are interesting and relate to our daily lives and specifically to my view of the world and an inward look into the self.