2024
Best known for the jewelry and figurative sculptures based on a range of pharmaceutical drugs that garnered her widespread notoriety in the late 1990s, prolific artist Colleen Wolstenholme has also created abstract drawings and other works over the years that continue to stimulate dialogue and attract attention.
Born in 1963 in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Wolstenholme became interested in visual arts while studying fashion design at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. After earning her bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1986, she continued her studies and received her master’s degree from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 1992, where she specialized in metal and jewelry arts.
Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, Wolstenholme worked with a range of mediums such as jewelry, sculpture, digital collage, painting and embroidery to create art that served as social criticism. Beginning in the mid-1990s, she made oversized plaster-cast sculptures and silver or gold jewelry that took the form of antidepressant pills and capsules in order to address several issues, including the fact that drugs are prescribed at disproportionate rates to women versus men, that the healthcare industry is overly reliant on prescribing drugs, and that anyone in treatment and on a course of medication is generally made to feel less healthy than those who aren’t. Wolstenholme’s provocative work made headlines in the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times and Psychology Today.
Wolstenholme’s art has also seen her unpacking her interest in the human brain. This is demonstrated in such abstract sculptures as Deviant Grid, the “Matrix Index” series and Spatial Anomaly in which she depicts the brain’s neurons. In her “Hyperobjects” series, Wolstenholme also focuses on systems that “humans have little power over but control and constrain us.” These include figurative drawings and abstract drawings of wind patterns, titled with geographical coordinates.
Wolstenholme’s art is part of the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.
On 1stDibs, find a range of Colleen Wolstenholme sculptures, drawings and watercolor paintings.
Organic Abstract _Yellow Stains II
By Cymn Wong
Located in Rockville, MD
Cymn Wong’s style of mixed media paintings are developed alongside with pastel, crayon, acrylic and ink. Rooted from traditional Chinese ink-brush painting to contemporary New York ...
Mixed Media, Acrylic
Organic Abstract _Yellow Stains I
By Cymn Wong
Located in Rockville, MD
Cymn Wong’s style of mixed media paintings are developed alongside with pastel, crayon, acrylic and ink. Rooted from traditional Chinese ink-brush painting to contemporary New York ...
Mixed Media, Acrylic
"Yellow Room" -- Painting on Canvas by Bonnie Maygarden
By Bonnie Maygarden
Located in New Orleans, LA
BONNIE MAYGARDEN says of her work… My work is informed by and reacts to a culture defined by a digital experience, yet the work’s imagery is created entirely by hand, using only pai...
Canvas, Acrylic
Yellow on Yellow (Abstract Painting)
By Janise Yntema
Located in London, GB
19 x 36 cm (7.5 x 14.2 in) image mounted on board 41 x 51 cm (16 x 20 in) matted Janise Yntema’s practice is rooted in the mastery of wax-based media, ranging from traditional heate...
Wax, Encaustic, Archival Paper
$646
H 15.75 in W 7.88 in D 0.79 in
Yellow - Expressionism, Underwater Seascape Painting, Abstract Landscape
By Justyna Pennards-Sycz
Located in Hallein, AT
As a graduate of the Art Academy Utrecht (Hogeschool voor de Kunsten), Justyna has specialized in painting. Justyna’s paintings push the boundaries between abstraction and representa...
Canvas, Acrylic
Serious Painting (Yellow on Black)
By Nick Hunt
Located in Santa Monica, CA
Nick Hunt grew up in in Newport Beach in the 80’s and early 90’s. As Hunt states, “It was an unknown area to a lot of the world. Development was in progress, but at that point in time it was still mostly open land, populated with surfers and desert-beach dreamers. My work is inspired by this desert-ocean dangerous allure.” Hunt’s work, while abstract, conjures a sense of history - both in their Light and Space influences and in the the rough beauty of the objects themselves. The scumbled, dented, sometimes bullet riddled surfaces reveal layers of color, painted on metal, and hint at a romantic complexity beneath the glossy enameled surfaces. Hunt spent a lot of time in Mexico as a boy, where he got to know Billy Al Bengston, Peter Alexander, Chuck Arnoldi...
Enamel
Yellow swirl with balls
By Jeff Engberg
Located in Barcelona, CT
Pintura de Jeff Engberg con las siguientes dimensiones: 100 x 100 cm Técnica: Óleo sobre tela
Canvas
$2,100
H 36 in W 36 in
"Yellow" (2022) by Jennifer Bobola, Mixed Media Abstract Painting
By Jennifer Bobola
Located in Denver, CO
"Yellow" is an original, handmade mixed media painting, by Jennifer Bobola, that presents colorful abstract expressionism. Artist Statement: Let’s be honest, understanding abstract ...
Mixed Media
Flood Yellow
By Dirk de Bruycker
Located in Los Angeles, CA
"Flood Yellow", oil and mixed media on canvas —48 x 36 x 2 inches — 1995. De Bruycker was born in Ghent, Belgium but has lived and worked in Santa Fe, NM for the past 30 years u...
Canvas, Mixed Media, Oil
Automatics (yellow love, 1, 2)
By Anastasia Pelias
Located in New Orleans, LA
diptych, 36 x 36 inches each Anastasia Pelias was born in New Orleans, LA to Greek parents. Her artistic practice is rooted in the dual cultural identity of both her native and an...
Canvas, Oil, Acrylic
Yellow Ctenophore Oil Painting on Wood Panel, Contemporary, 2010-
By Colleen Wolstenholme
Located in Montreal, Quebec
With Into the Deep Blue Sea, Nova Scotia-born, New Brunswick-based artist Colleen Wolstenholme presents a series of deep sea oil paintings and ink drawings, accompanied by a tent ins...
Oil, Wood Panel
Benthic Ctenophore Oil Painting on Wood Panel, Contemporary, 2010-
By Colleen Wolstenholme
Located in Montreal, Quebec
With Into the Deep Blue Sea, Nova Scotia-born, New Brunswick-based artist Colleen Wolstenholme presents a series of deep sea oil paintings and ink drawings, accompanied by a tent ins...
Oil, Wood Panel
Radiolarian Oil Painting on Wood Panel, Contemporary, Unframed, 24x24
By Colleen Wolstenholme
Located in Montreal, Quebec
With Into the Deep Blue Sea, Nova Scotia-born, New Brunswick-based artist Colleen Wolstenholme presents a series of deep sea oil paintings and ink drawings, accompanied by a tent ins...
Oil, Wood Panel
Solmissus Jelly Oil Painting on Wood Panel, Contemporary, 24x24, 2010+
By Colleen Wolstenholme
Located in Montreal, Quebec
With Into the Deep Blue Sea, Nova Scotia-born, New Brunswick-based artist Colleen Wolstenholme presents a series of deep sea oil paintings and ink drawings, accompanied by a tent ins...
Oil, Wood Panel
Pelagic Polychaete Oil Painting on Wood Panel, Contemporary, 24x24
By Colleen Wolstenholme
Located in Montreal, Quebec
With Into the Deep Blue Sea, Nova Scotia-born, New Brunswick-based artist Colleen Wolstenholme presents a series of deep sea oil paintings and ink drawings, accompanied by a tent ins...
Oil, Wood Panel
Small Yellow City Painting, Abstract Oil on Canvas, 2010s, Unframed
By Judith Berry
Located in Montreal, Quebec
I think of my paintings primarily as landscapes. Recently, these landscapes appear to be more manufactured than organic. At first glance the subjects seem to be monumental forms such...
Canvas, Oil
