"Encountering Holly Lane's artwork will stop you in your tracks because you won't have seen anything quite like it. It will also stop you becaue it's exquistely vivid, dream-like paintings will find their way to your subconscious and grab you.  And, it will stop you becasue the intricately carved and polished architectural housings, which convey no distinct historical style but are an amalagm of many, will delight your imagination and hold it in awe." 

Helaine Glick, Fresno Art Museum catalog, Holly Lane; Indwelling Nature, 2018
 


"There is no mistaking a Holly Lane painting; elaborate handcarved frames surround intimate paintings inspired by Romanticism and Northern Renaissance art."

John O'Hern, "Unfolding Visions", American Art Collector, January 2018



"Armed with one small bench-top scroll saw and an arsenal of "old world" hand carving tools, Holly Lane meticulously carves frames that are equal in merit to her skillfully crafted paintings.  Prefaced by working drawings that help to conceptualize her final designs, she carefully cuts, sands and fabricates the elaborate structures that cradle the allegorical vision she paints.  The amalgamated works evoke an alternatie universe based on surrealist, gothic and renaissance vocabularies, while tapping into mythological references. Yet they also address contemporary social issues, as well as our relationship to nature and the animal kingdom with shadowy humor."

Marc D'Estout, curator, San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design (parital) wall text for "Holly Lane: Carving Allegories" July 13-Sept 15, 2013



"Over the past twenty years Northern California artist Holly Lane has created an impressive body of work that bears witness to her twin talents as painter and wood worker. Known for her intricately carved frames which are the settings for her exquisitely rendered paintings, Lane's pieces share in the art historical traditons of Gothic architecture, the Flemish Renaissance, Art Nouveu, Arts and Crafts and various modernist schools of lanscape and figure." 

Jason Lahman, PBS ART21, "Like a Golden Allegory: Holly Lane's Bright Monuments to Epiphany and Eureka", January 1, 2012



"One of my favorites is the gilded carving by Holly Lane. Lane makes intricately carved sculptures often gilded, based on the style of medieval altarpiece and mixed with elements from classical architecture. Her pieces sometimes have a subtle humor that is grounded in the ecclesiastical nature of her sources, often using visual puns.  The piece here, "Love Song for Her Last Hour" impresses an analytical rigor to is emotional content."

Ken Greenleaf, The Portland Phoenix, "Birth of a Museum", March 3, 2010 



“At first glance, one might mistake Holly Lane’s loving painted intricately framed icons for odd religious relics.  But Lanes artifacts are far from antiquated.  Rather, they are quirky allegorical narratives addressing such diverse issues as the role of women in society, spiritual faith, and environmental degradation from a wryly humorous highly personal point of view”.                   

George Melrod, Art & Antiques, September 1995


 
“Panel painting inside hand carved frames.”  

The New York Times, Sunday Sept. 7, 1997



 
”Lane merges the abbreviated physical spaces of early Renaissance tableaus with the psychological realm explored in Surrealist painting.”     

Berin Golonu, Artweek, Previews, April 2001


 
“Holly Lane creates paintings cradled and presented in elaborately carved three-dimensional frames that recall liturgical altarpieces of late Gothic and Renaissance times…The atmospheric play of light and shadow in her paintings, combined with the biomorphic look of her landscapes and the luscious depth of space in her skies and horizons, intimate a merging of physical space with psychological space.” 
   
Jo Farb-Hernandez, Director, Natalie & James Thompson Gallery, San Jose State University  “Small Miracles” catalog essay, April 2001
 



“Lane combines several images on separate panels to create a layered narrative.  To complement her small-scale pictures she carves and paints… wood frames that amplify the paintings’ themes and become part of the work.”     

Katherine Gregor, ARTnews, Holly Lane, “Frame and Fiction, Summer 1992



 
”…Lane use(s) painting as a crystallized mental theatre (that) seductively illustrates discursive ideas”.     

Peter Schjeldahl,   Catalog essay, California Center for the Arts Museum  “Myths & Magical Fantasies” October 27,1996-February 2, 1997



 
“Holly Lane paints animals people and scenes from the natural world to create allegories that address large philosophical questions in an intimate fashion.  Attempting to reconcile culture and nature, social and biological conflict, the future and the past, Lane’s intricately carved, altar-like pieces touch on human foibles with gentle humor.”                

Memphis College of Art Biennial 1999 catalog – February 1999



 
”Holly Lane creates exquisite extraordinarily crafted small paintings in altar-like wooden structure she carves herself.  Referencing medieval religious icons and liturgical altars her works are deeply imaginative, haunting and sometimes whimsical mediations of the environment, feminism and our sometimes confused and always complex relationship with the animal world.”    

Ben Mitchell, Senior Curator, Yellowstone Art Museum, Museum website, July 2001


 

“Her symmetrical wooden altars house odd surreal paintings as the intricate physical body houses the enigmatic soul…her meticulous carving share intriguing formal qualities with the convoluted and bio-morphic imagery found within the pictures…The sum creates allegorical shrines exuding thought-provoking psychological elements…”                        

Anthony Di Maggio, Review, NYC, September 15, 1999


 
“Her sculpted frames resonant references to Old Masters and her surrealist facility for creating fantastic terrains, seemingly point to the past.  Lane, however, is very much in the fast lane of contemporary culture. Her intellectually rigorous approach on canvas in addressing such powder keg issues as feminism, the environmental and animal rights easily hurdle any notion of propaganda.  Lane’s paintings elicits vigorous contemplation.  For those ready to the challenge, the rewards are beyond measure.”           

Judd Tully, catalog essay, “Pictures on the Edge, The Narrative Images of Holly Lane”  March 1995, Art Museum of Southeast Texas
 


 
“…immediately captured our attention because it harbored a sense of mysticism that had arisen from a highly creative and personal visual vocabulary.  The integration of the frame was not new but the manner in which this frame became part of the art was ingenious.  Holly Lane took the techniques of integrating frame and painting to a new level.”     

Lynn Castle, Curator, Art Museum of Southeast Texas, catalog, Frames of Mind, 1995