BOOK REVIEW: EITHNE FARRY. IMAGE: EMOTIONS SERIES; SOUL SEARCHING, ARTWORK BY HOLLY HOLDER. PHOTOGRAPH: GRAHAM CLARK. *R DUNBAR ET AL, EMOTIONAL AROUSAL WHEN WATCHING DRAMA INCREASES PAIN THRESHOLD AND SOCIAL BONDING, ‘ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE’, 2016; **BRITISH GYPSUM AND SOUND SOLUTIONS; †POLL BY TETLEY FOR CHARITY, SMILE CHAIN; ††A MEURET ET AL, TIMING MATTERS: ENDOGENOUS CORTISOL MEDIATES BENEFITS FROM EARLY-DAY PSYCHOTHERAPY, 'PUBMED', 2016. FOR STOCKISTS
After working as a make-up artist on film and TV sets for 26 years, Holly Holder’s life changed when she was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa – a degenerative eye condition that resulted in her being registered blind. ‘The feeling of loss of control caused a torrent of depression. My art (pictured) dragged me out of it like a medic over a wounded battlefield,’ she says. ‘Blindness has taken away simple pleasures; I can’t cook for my family, I can’t see their faces clearly when they laugh and I can’t appreciate my art entirely. It’s also given me strength: I picked up my make-up brushes, not wanting to throw them in the bin after all the success they had given me, and started to paint.
Art was a way of re-establishing my identity.’ hollyholder.com