Loie Hollowell’s Beacon (2018) is part of her Dominant/Recessive series in which the artist investigates the embodied female experience. Through these works, Loie explores the psychological and physical complexities of conception – both the act of trying and the event itself – through a formal language that draws on abstraction, symbolism, and the topography of the body. Beacon asserts Hollowell’s place within a lineage of feminist abstraction, building upon the legacies of artists such as Judy Chicago, Ithell Colquhoun Georgia O’Keeffe, and Agnes Pelton.

In Beacon, radiant fields of saturated colour – pinks, oranges, violets, and reds – pulse with energy. At the centre of the composition lies a sculptural protrusion, seamlessly integrated into the painting’s surface. These three-dimensional elements are carved from high-density foam, mounted on linen-covered panels, and coated in a mixture of sawdust and acrylic medium. Once smoothed to a skin-like finish, they become the substrate for oil paint, applied with precision to create luminous gradients and volumetric forms. The result is a surface that hovers between the optical illusion of depth and the physical reality of relief – what Hollowell calls the “liminal space” between painting and sculpture.

In Beacon, Hollowell abstracts the human body. Her compositions reference anatomical forms without depicting them literally. The mandorla – an almond-shaped motif frequently found in religious iconography as a vessel for divine figures – is recontextualised here as a symbolic stand-in for the vulva. Similarly, the lingam, a sacred Hindu emblem representing generative energy and often associated with Shiva, serves as an abstract counterpart to the phallus. These references embed Beacon within a broader history of sacred sexual symbolism, positioning the female body as a site of mysticism and divinity.

Yet Hollowell’s project is deeply personal as well as art historical. In her own words, the series emerged from her experience of trying to conceive, a process marked by both physical intimacy and emotional complexity. “To put the thoughts I have, about trying to conceive and becoming pregnant into my painting/sculpting language,” she writes, “is an invitation to embrace the physicality and otherworldliness of that primal sexual act.” Beacon is thus a tactile meditation on fertility, desire, and transformation.

The preparatory process behind Beacon further underscores Hollowell’s rigour and intentionality. She begins with soft pastel drawings, carefully exploring the interplay of colour, shading, and form. These studies inform the final works, where oil paint – applied over sculpted surfaces – heightens the push and pull between flatness and relief, image and object. The visual effect is one of glowing inner light, echoing the spiritual resonance suggested by the title Beacon.

In navigating the territory between body and symbol, surface and depth, Hollowell reclaims abstraction as a mode of embodied expression. Beacon performs and embodies the female experience, drawing the viewer into a world where colour, light, and form converge to speak of pleasure, vulnerability, and generative power.