Holly Knox Rhame is a painter from Southport, Connecticut who is based in Manhattan. Rhame utilizes a storybook style that engages subtle complexities through an arranged simplicity, capturing the essence of dark emotional contortions that underlie the restricted living environment found within the scope of suburbia. The artist also extends this line of conflicting vulnerability in several figurative drawings that function as multi-layered metaphors.

In Southport Triptych (2011) Rhame crowds three canvases with tall, narrow house structures that lean and stretch into each other, rendering a visible tension within the composition. Flora and fauna also unfurl with a mannerist flair, creating small areas of combustion within this otherwise peaceful setting. In a drawing titled Fancy Trees(2010) the artist cryptically portrays two animals sauntering among ivy-laced, stonewalls, bearing holiday décor whereas another piece titled Apple Monsters (2009) is more surreal and completely focuses on two jesters who dance around a suspended oil lamp and consist entirely of small yellow apples.

In 2011 Holly Knox Rhame graduated from the California Institute of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in several group shows since 2007. In April 2011 Rhame opened a solo show titled Southport that appeared at the Lime Gallery while in March her work was featured in a group show titled Light as a Feather Stiff as a Board at the Stevenson Blanche Gallery, at the California Institute of Fine Arts. The artist won Pen and Brush Inc.’s People’s Choice Awards in October 2011. In December of that year Rhame won an award from Dave Bown Projects. Her work was included in a group show titled Home that took place in May 2012 at the Front Street Gallery, located in Patterson, New York. Within the past year she began developing a comic with Desert Island, located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Holly Knox Rhame now has work on view in the Art File of the Painting Center.