Holly Meeker Rom

Biography

An artist and educator, Holly Meeker Rom, is fascinated by the visual world around her.

Working on paper in the 2D medium of watercolor and collage she is always experimenting. Her subjects have ranged from red rock country out west, to glaciers of Patagonia, to east coast gardens, to nature close-ups of aspens and seashells, and water, to architecture and portraits. She uses the watercolor vocabulary in her practice. Transparent colors, or gouache applied in a wet, dry, or loose way is her approach. Sometimes she experiments with drips and pours and torn pieces collaged onto the surface.

She spent 17 years as a docent at The Met Museum and in-school programs as an educational volunteer. The travel she did worldwide during these years with her husband, enhanced her understanding of art history.

She also has an extensive history of exhibitions, both solo and group. Her Climate Change series was shown in a solo show at the NIH Clinical Center galleries in Bethesda, MD in 2015. This same body of work traveled to the NYU Langone Medical Center MSB Gallery 5 months later. It highlighted views of the glaciers and other creatures and events connected with climate change in a very original way. It was favorably reviewed in the Washington Post (10/16/16 ) when selected works were shown at Alex Gallery A in Washington, DC. 

Her work is in numerous collections, and she has won many awards, including the most recent one for her Grand Canyon watercolor/collage in The Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club 124th Annual Open Exhibition in 2021 at the Salmagundi Club. She has an MFA in painting from American University and a BA from Mills College in Oakland, CA. She also was in an exchange program from Mills at Rhode Island School of Design. She is a signature member of www.clwac.org as well as the Northwest Watercolor Society.

In the words of a reviewer, "Her sure command of the watercolor medium enables her to convey its essence with an abstract freedom that makes her paintings much more than literal interpretations of nature."

Artist statement

The works in this album are collages inspired by different moments in my life. The glaciers were created after a trip we took to Patagonia to the Perito Merino Glacier with National Geographic Expeditions. After the trip, I worked in my studio on photos I had taken. The practice of making a collage consists first of preparing rice papers with colored pigments that capture the feeling of the theme or place. Then I pastedown and cut and tear the papers to work up my theme.

In the portrait, I clipped sections from magazines to get just the right piece for the face. The rest was done with acrylic paint and a brush on a paper ground.

In the Whale image titled "Symphony", I did a series on Melville's Moby Dick. This painting is predominantly watercolor.

It is always an adventure of the imagination. Starting with a composition in mind, the piece I create is an interactive process of matching paint, to torn edge to subject.