Branding

Holly Tappen is an oil painter of figurative and abstract art. She studied Art History at Emory University in Atlanta and Paris. Holly paints in her California Building studio every day. She has studied with David Feinberg, Alexandra Rosenmann, Greg Lipelt, and Suzann Beck. Every Monday night you will find her at researching Leonardo's techniques at The Art Academy in Saint Paul, and on Sundays she draws the models at Studio 103 Drawing Co-op.

Minneapolis/Saint Paul is her permanent home now, after living in Atlanta, New Orleans, Milwaukee, Paris, New York and on the road with Renaissance Festivals. Travel is important to her art; she has gone to such varied places as Chechnya, Dominican Republic, Bosnia, Mexico, and most of Europe. These areas figure in her paintings and collages, often leading to interesting stories written behind the pictures.

In the arts, she has been an actor, playwright, set designer and painter, costume designer and builder, and fiction writer. She has focused in the last decade on producing high quality paintings. She has had a number of solo and group shows in Minnesota, a permanent series at the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis Anthropology Department, and a piece on long-term loan displayed at the Hinckley Fire Museum.

"To paint The Dance itself, without painting The Dancer - there is my challenge."