(Canadian, b. 1961) Holly Farrell is a Canadian painter who lives and works in Toronto. Nostalgia drives her subject matter, still life being her main focus. Farrell considers her still life paintings to be simple meditations on people and places she has known – there is a sense of the portrait in everything that she paints. Farrell's subjects are the common, everyday tools of day-to-day existence – things that many people are able to project their own experiences onto. Her images have a universal quality, forging a link between all the people who have read a specific book, played with a certain toy, or used a particular brand of soap. Farrell’s “Album Project” series recreated the covers of iconic LPs from the 1970s, all from her personal collection, complete with the creases and scuffs accumulated over the years, forming a parallel between their own physical deterioration and her own.
Farrell's work has been exhibited in Canada, the U.S., England, and Japan. Her paintings are in corporate and private collections throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan, including BMO, Canada; William Louis-Dreyfus Family Collection (Gérard Louis-Dreyfus), U.S.A., and Sony Music.
