Excerpt:
In her meticulously rendered, illusionistic drawings
and paintings, Maura Holden creates richly detailed,
self-contained worlds, in which fantastic primeval landscapes
and cities made up of elaborate multi-tiered buildings
emerge from banks of billowing fog or stand out against
glowing, turbulent-looking skies.
The human figures and gargoylish creatures populating
these realms are most often frontally posed in confrontational
stances, to somewhat unnerving effect. These are powerful,
visionary images, evoking a deep sense of the uncanny.
Thanatos Wave, 1999-
2000, 38 x 38 ins./ 96.5 x 96.5 cm, oil on panel, collection
of the artist