Hollie Berry wields a torch like a paintbrush
A remarkable series of new works is being produced by Chattanooga Workspace artist Hollie Berry. A pioneer in the process of torch painting, she has developed a unique method of capturing a high degree of realism with fire and wood.
This impressive feat is a relatively new development in a lifelong career.Though her parents didn’t know much about art, they were very supportive of Berry in her youth, encouraging and sending her to private lessons. She took art classes every year in school, graduating from high school in Houston and then majoring in art at the University of Texas Austin.
Before she discovered torch painting, Berry was already a well-established equestrian portrait artist and muralist. Her fascination with painting horses began in childhood.
“I used to frustrate my art teachers because they would try to teach me many different techniques and styles of artwork, but all I wanted to do was paint horses,” Hollie remembers. “So, they would tell me to paint a landscape painting, and I would paint a landscape with horses in the field. If they would tell me to paint a still life, I would paint a picture of a horse’s head reaching in to eat an apple from the still life. I would always find some way to get a horse in there.”
She paints portraits of horses and riders for commission.
“I specialize in it because not a lot of artists have the expertise to portray both horse anatomy and human anatomy,” she explains. “Horse and rider portraits can be challenging, but they are one of my specialties.”Berry also paints non-commissioned portraits of horses, selling them to whomever they appeal to.
One of her primary interests is in capturing the athleticism and fluidity of movement of horses.
“I will often blur out or repeat areas,” she says, explaining her process. “When I was the featured artist for the Iroquois Steeple Chase horse race in 2015, I did a whole series of portraits of racehorses, and that was a major focus in those paintings was trying to capture that blinding speed of the horses rushing past you.
“There were a number of those where I would blur out or duplicate legs in an attempt to replicate the way the human eye sees a horse when it is running at a full tilt gallop—you can’t see the individual legs, you just see a blur moving underneath them as they fly past. I was trying to capture that movement with paint the way the human eye sees it, rather than the way a camera would see it.”
She mostly uses oil paint in her equestrian work, but her latest series includes some mixed media components including alcohol and acrylic ink, as well as fluid acrylics to get some splashier abstract shapes for the backgrounds.
“I always paint on panels rather than canvasses, because they are more durable and archival,” Hollie says. “Panels also allow me to use other techniques like scraping and sanding that might be too violent for a canvas.
“Right now I am working on a large series of paintings inspired by the show Cavalia, which is like Cirque du Soliel with horses—the paintings have a lot of theatrical lighting and brilliant colors because of that influence.”The most recent development in her career came with her introduction to torch painting in 2015.
“Although I’ve done a few horses, most of my torch paintings are inspired by fire dancers, especially our local Chattanooga Fire Cabaret troupe,” she says.
“I photograph them at performances, and I have also hired one of the models for a photo shoot for some of my recent pieces. I recently completed my largest torch painting to date, which was a 74”x74” piece for the Edwin Hotel.”
She continues, “Torch painting is very much like charcoal drawing, except you can’t touch it, and you can’t erase it. The propane is a soft burn, like using loose charcoal powder to build layer upon layer of dark. I started off with just one Bernzomatic propane torch, and discovered that I can use a metal putty knife to get sharp edges if I need them, so it wouldn’t look out of focus—to get a crisp line when I need to.”
In addition, Berry also paints murals. Her most recent one is in Cleveland, on the side of Museum Center Five Points—a large mural of aquatic wildlife from our watershed.
She painted the Four Horsemen as part of the McCallie Walls Mural project, and was the local leader of a team of nine artists who worked on the AT&T building on MLK—the first mural to wrap around an entire city block.You can see her work at hollieberryart.com