Holly Mae Pendergast has been painting her entire life but turned to it as a full time profession eight years ago. Her love is painting landscapes and animals but her passion is in the figuratives.

Holly Mae received her five-year degree, a BFA, at Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, Ohio. Once graduated, she worked in the Los Angeles film industry as a conceptual designer and special effects artist in the mid 90’s. But there was always a desire to return to the roots of her professional training as a fine artist. So, she made the break from the film industry, cut up her credit cards and moved to the mountains of Utah to paint full-time.

Her landscapes often portray aspens and she feels moved to paint these particular trees not just because they are a part of her everyday environment but because of the symbolisms they provide. They are massive organisms, the largest in the world, with all the trees of a family being connected under the ground. Because of the white bark they reflect color from their surrounding environment. This creates wonderful opportunities to use a full palette of color.

Desert landscapes and animals are becoming more prominent as she spends more time and acclimates to these environments which is far different than the farm in the Appalachian Mountains she called home as a child.

Lately her quail and coyote studies have started to become more stylized with longer necks, smaller heads, fragmenting color and are beginning to look more like the stylization of her figures.

Holly Mae’s portraits and figuratives are about capturing a moment and an experience of a person and not an exact image. Her training as a professional commercial illustrator taught her that the more accurately you portray how someone looks the better the artist. As her art matures how someone looks is becoming less and less important and how they feel in that given moment is what seems to matter. It is a subtle look in one eye or the way the head is so slightly cocked that holds her attention.

The biggest complement someone can pay is to hire her to do a commission of a loved one in her own style.

Line work is a very important quality to her paintings. She struggled for years “painting” heavy dark line around her figures and her landscapes but the line dominated the painting and something was lost or overwhelmed. When she finally discovered how she could scribe and draw right into the paintings with graphite it opened a huge door. Now she could express her love for line without the painting being totally dominated with it.

Holly Mae loves the idea of a work in progress. She enjoys the rawness of heavy laid gesso that shows through and an under painting that is allowed to breathe through heavy over painting that accentuates negative space. To her the artist’s process is far more important than a glossy finished piece of art.

Holly Mae Pendergast has received awards for the,” Arts of the Parks” Competition, American Association of University Women Arts Competition, UVSC Woodbury Art Museum, Merit scholarships from Columbus College of Art and Design, Vermont Artist’s Studio Center  Scottsdale Artist School.

She participates annually in the: Thomas Gilcrease Museum Invitational Show and is in permanent collections in the Salt Lake County Artist Collection and Art Access Gallery permanent collection. In 2006 she will be in “The Family Experience” show at the Museum of Fine Arts at Florida State University. Holly Mae’s landscapes were featured in Southwest Art Magazine’s “Start your Collection” article in February 2005.