Documenting my cats Journey

Holly Greenfields work explores the relationship between humans and pets. She looks at her own pet cat’s life and documents it through her eyes with the help of oil paints. Most of Holly’s paintings are capturing her cat, Eliza, in their shared environment and makes sure all of her paintings are unscripted and authentic. We see Eliza adapting to her new home after Holly adopted her and we progress with them as their relationship blossoms.

We travel with Holly as she creates a series of paintings documenting how their relationship is affected when moving house. She captures Eliza exploring and settling into a new home through life drawings and oil painting, with a loose impressionist style. Each painting seems a continuation from the last, as she documents the positives and negatives that they both go through. The importance of prioritising your pet when going through something stressful was one of Hollys main ideas, showing that animals are part of the family.

Holly has looked at how the relationship between animals and humans have changed throughout history and understands the importance of animal rights which is clear throughout her paintings. Holly captures Eliza doing as she wants without manipulation making sure her practice is ethical and not questionable. She has investigated artists such as Sidney Nolan and Damien Hirst and considered how their artwork comes across compared to her own.

Her paintings vary from huge bright vivid portraits of Eliza to smaller and more calming tones of Eliza in the house. She has played with the size of her paintings and looks at how this changes how the viewer feels about Eliza. With exploration into painting on top of wallpaper samples, there is a clear link between the pet and the home and is something Holly wants to dive into further.