In this Place

I invite you in - to explore and look in such a way that will allow you to step into a land and to inhabit the place I have encountered. To look and look again, to be surprised and to wonder.

I use photography to get at one way of looking. I play with the nature of photography: pushing shadowy darks to become nearly black, creating a new reality; shallow depths of field present blurred areas. Intense bright light overwhelms parts of leaves or branches so that their edges disappear. There is a transformation I am looking for; we enter this place at once familiar and mysterious. Within the photographic images I find relationships to drawing. I explore the tangled lines and curves of leaves and branches, further altering the known landscape in my drawings.

My drawings respond to my photographs. From each photograph I glean information and select different moments- textures of bark, a sweep of movement in lines of branches. I use white pencil and gouache on black paper to explore the play of light on dark. The resulting stripped down black and white image- recalling a photographic negative- distills the contents of the photographs. The ground and surroundings are invisible. There is a floating sensation: trees, branches, and leaves hover in an otherworldly space. The spareness and economy in the drawings reduces the full riot of lush and dense woods present in the photographs to a set of intimate moments for us to dwell in.

My art practice comes directly from my reverence and love of nature and place; it nourishes me. I couple this with a keen interest in exploring images seen in multiple iterations, noticing what happens when I try this or that variation. I am compelled by this action of a double take, as we look again and explore the images further, teasing out similarities and differences. I want to invoke a deep looking, quietness, and invite a sense of wonder in my photographs and drawings- for myself and for you.

Biography:

Hilary Tolan is a Boston area artist. She was born in Port Jefferson, New York. She completed her Master’s in Art Education in the Artist/Teacher program at Massachusetts College of Art in and she received her BFA from Purchase College, New York. Tolan’s work has been reviewed by the Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix, Art New England and Artscope magazine. She has been a resident at the Brydcliff Artist colony at the Woodstock Guild in New York and was an artist in residence at the Hambidge Center, GA. Hilary creates her work using a range of materials including drawing, photography, sculpture, and installation. Since 2021, she has been the curator for Gallery 93, a community gallery at the Brookline Senior Center. She has gallery affiliations with the Kingston Gallery in Boston and DRIVE-BY/bk projects gallery in Watertown.

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