August Blues 2

Wiley Holton is a Boston-based abstract artist whose work is an exploration of geometry, color theory, and mental health. She has worked in oil, acrylic, graphite, printmaking, clay, and wood. Born in Boston in 1997, Wiley graduated with distinction from Colby College with a major in studio art and a minor in mathematics. She received the President’s Purchase Prize for her painting “Circumferences of the Void” featured in the Colby College Senior Capstone Exhibition in 2019. This piece remains in the permanent collection of the Colby College Museum of Art. Wiley Holton's kaleidoscope paintings articulate the chaos and anxiety and depression that stem from her ADHD and, in depicting how her brain feels and functions, challenge the misconceptions and generalizations that people attach to this neurological disorder and mental illnesses in general. She explores the impact on her representation of chaos by intentionally breaking this geometric pattern by randomly placing and starting new centers of the kaleidoscope. She wants to provoke the viewer to question what they are seeing and not seeing amongst the smudged chaos. By playing with the contrast between the background and the lines themselves, she is demonstrating a complexity of vision, emotion, and experience. With the newer addition of filling in the shapes of the kaleidoscopes with color, she is exploring the concept of finding peace amongst the chaos. Her work is in numerous private collections across the country.