I first met Holly Heiser Hornyan at an Art and Mezcal event at Acre a few years ago. She was displaying a range of her paintings. I was interested and so we met and she told me a little about her background. Holly told me that she has always been interested in art and even started her post-secondary education at art school. However, the needed to make a living, which led her to audiology, where she pursued and completed a Master’s degree to be able to practice. But she had always kept that interested in art in its many forms. She had a faux painting business in Denver, creating unique looks for people’s homes, where she would commission artist to do murals if her clients wanted them. Her interest in art expanded to include tattooing and so she took the courses necessary to get licensed as a tattoo artist and used her husband’s skin as a canvas.
When she and her husband, Derrick Hornyan, a professional photographer had a long term goal of moving to Los Cabos and when they decided it was finally the time to pursue their dreams, they packed up and moved. Initially, she flew back and forth to the United States as a consultant in Audiology. But this became a bit too much and so her career changed once again to time share sales in Cabo San Lucas. Throughout all of this, her interest in art continued to grow and she started to paint again.
Currently, much of Holly’s art is commissioned. She has a unique approach to her commissioned artwork. The client describes what they want and she makes it clear that she needs the ability to interpret what they say and add her creativity to the process. At times, she has been nervous that the client won’t be happy with her interpretation. She is not one to simply copy a photograph to turn it into a painting. But so far everyone has be delighted with what she has done.
What is even more interesting is that much of her commissioned work involves large scale interior or exterior murals for homes and businesses in Los Cabos. Because of the commissions, Holly’s art does not focus on a single theme. Rather it includes a wide range of subjects from pet memorials to ocean and landscape scenes to in-depth explorations of historical and contemporary people of Mexico. Expanding on her earlier work in faux painting, many of her commissions involve painting on the interior and exterior walls of homes to create an atmosphere and feeling for the home owners and their guests. Some of these works are huge and cover whole walls that are nine or ten feet tall.
Since that time, when Beth’s father passed away, I asked her to do a painting of the two of them together. When we moved into the new townhouse in Pueblo Campastre with a long wall in the outdoor patio, it was a natural to ask Holly to do a mural along the wall. We met and had an initial discussion and then she sent us two brief concepts, making it clear that it would evolve as the work was in progress. It was fascinating watching Holly work each day as she would paint something, stand back and then adjust the color, the shadows or the image itself. She worked each afternoon for about ten days to perfect our mural, taking input from Beth about her decisions of details to add to the mural. The final result is amazing. Our goal was to bring the outdoor in and to re-create a little of our experience of living on the beach in Zacatitos. The creation of a terrace allowed this to work brilliantly. The photos below show the final mural as well as the day-by-day progress on it as details are added. We hope you like it.
For more information about Holly Heiser Hornyan and her artwork visit her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/tattoorebel
