Traver Gallery is pleased to welcome veteran Northwest painter Harold Hollingsworth to the Traver Gallery family. In Switched On, his first solo exhibition with Traver Gallery, Hollingsworth debuts a series of bright, layered, and graphic mixed-media collaged paintings that reference the artists’ interest in early modernism, contemporary graphic design, music, and urban landscapes.
Hollingsworth approaches his work intuitively, collaging found paper materials gathered from telephone poles and other urban posting sites. He builds up an initial surface by recontextualizing these appropriated graphics, layering typography, and imagery. He then applies layers of paint, adding texture and additional graphic elements, accentuating and obscuring his initial reference material, and building visual rhythms much as a musician composes a song. The result is an active composition with a tangible physicality. A new modernist paying homage to De Stijl and Bauhaus masters, Hollingsworth plays with bold black lines and blocks of color while embracing current symbols and urban lifestyle.
A native of Seattle and a graduate of Western Washington University, Hollingsworth is greatly influenced by professor and artist R. Allem Jensen. He has participated in over 45 exhibitions nationally and internationally and his paintings are included in many prominent corporate collections including Nordstrom, The Target Corporation, Twitter, Hilton Hotels, and Swedish Hospital. Hollingsworth is an avid cyclist who lives and works in Seattle, WA.