Rebecca Holden lives and works just north of New Zealand's capital Wellington. In 2013 she graduated with an MFA from Massey University, NZ. Where she now teaches in the School of Art.
Her paintings, large and gestural, employ visual narratives to explore the multiple guises of humanity. The good and the bad conditions of humankind act as agency to her practice. Rebecca utilises figuration and colour in the portrayal of emotion and gesture. Representations of animals, a regular feature in her work, are interwoven into the composite arrangement of her paintings. The animals are often metaphors for different aspects of humanity. The perspective of distance, be it geographical or historical, also informs Rebecca's work. "New Zealand is a long way from the rest of the world and is a small and relatively new nation. I find that I reflect on this distance and how this impacts on how I perceive the world" Rebecca says.
In her paintings she utilises different levels of finish from sketched forms to layered, more highly rendered areas to give different levels of interest to areas of the work. Mistakes and corrections are left partially visible marking the progress of the works journey.
Rebecca's paintings are project led which often determines the size and number of the works. Depending on the project, she most often works on paper as it can be adapted to the space it is hung in. Due to the often large scale and the flexibility of painting's support, opportunity for unexpected relationships occur between different aspects of Rebecca's artwork as it shapes, or is shaped by, the space it populates.