Holly Friesen was born in Saskatchewan, studied Visual Arts at John Abbott College in Montreal and painting at York University in Toronto. Throughout many years of travel she discovered the portability of watercolours and honed her skills by painting on location. Settling in Mont-Tremblant, QC, Holly opened Artbeat Studio where she painted & taught for 20 years. While living & working in the Laurentians she painted from close observation of nature. She rediscovered the luscious physicality of oils and the textural versatility of acrylics. The scale of her paintings continually grew to accommodate the large movement she felt within herself and the earth around her. Her newest pieces are largely informed by internal metaphors and dream images she encounters when painting from inside the landscape.

My Artist Statement

My work revolves around earth-honoring images that reconnect us to our local bio regions. These images are meant to internalize a reverence for the earth and strengthen the process of shifting from harming the world to living in a mutually life enhancing manner.
Painting, for me, is like deep prayer awakening a reverence for the earth’s inner landscape; the image is in you and you are in the painting. Painting is my breath, beauty my compass, and the earth my body