THE GOOD LIFE
ART
Postnatal Portraiture Holly Keogh uses McColl Center residency to capture images of women as newborn mothers BY GRACE COTE PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRIS EDWARDS
UNTIL RECENTLY, painter Holly Keogh’s main subjects were family members, typically pulled from discarded images of the past: her mother as a child, or herself as a frowning, black-eyed girl. Using subjects so known to her is a comfort zone of sorts where she’s free to alter compositions until something new emerges. “It’s not about creating a likeness to my own personal family members,” she says. “I’m widening that scope and making it more about the mood.” During her spring residency at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation, running through the end of this month, the figures in her paintings have been strangers to her. Yet her current project still works within that familial theme: She paints mothers as they recover in the hospital after they’ve given birth. The project is a partnership with Atrium Health, which has funded Charlotte-area artists for several years and helped select Keogh for the McColl Center residency. “We were reviewing some amazing artists from all over the globe,” says Matt Roden, Atrium’s community relations director, “but realized we had a thriving art community here in our own backyard.”
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CHARLOTTEMAGAZINE.COM // APRIL 2020
Now, through Atrium, Keogh builds relationships with pregnant women, photographs them after they give birth, then uses those photographs for her paintings. She meets soon-to-be mothers through prenatal classes, Maternity Center tours, and pregnant acquaintances. For the first time, she doesn’t intimately know her subjects, which creates a politeness barrier to overcome. Delivery is a complicated business, and the modern pressures of motherhood, plus the specific setting of a hospital room, equal stress. Keogh enters the room to
photograph mothers Holly Keogh's postnatal who juggle the beeping paintings machines and parade of came out of visitors—all while trying her residency to enjoy their newborns. at the McColl Center. She is aware of the sensitive environment. “It is very brave, it is very human … I definitely respect this moment,” she says. “Hopefully they are paintings that these women can relate to.” Keogh is a locally sourced resident at the McColl, which features artists from across the globe. The Charlotte native
