About the Artist

Wiley Holton is a Boston-based abstract artist whose work is an exploration of geometry, color theory, and mental health. She has worked in oil, acrylic, graphite, printmaking ink, clay, and wood. Born in Boston in 1997, Wiley Holton graduated with distinction from Colby College with a major in studio art and a minor in mathematics. She received the President’s Purchase Prize for her painting “Circumferences of the Void” featured in the Colby College Senior Capstone Exhibition in 2019. This piece remains in the permanent collection of the Colby College Museum of Art.

She expresses her artistic vision in three primary painting styles: kaleidoscopes, topographical works, and floral bouquets. Wiley’s paintings range in size from small pieces to wall murals. Her paintings are in private collections in Las Vegas, Lexington KY, Denver, Ventura, Boston, Maine, Sydney AUS, just to name a few.

You can follow along with Wiley’s works and process on her instagram @artbywileyholton.

My kaleidoscope paintings articulate the chaos of the anxiety and depression that stem from my ADHD and challenge misconceptions and generalizations that people attach to this neurological disorder and mental illnesses in general. I am exploring the impact on my desired representation of chaos by intentionally breaking this geometric pattern by randomly placing and starting new centers of the kaleidoscope. I want to provoke the viewer to question what they are seeing and what they are not seeing amongst the smudged chaos. With the newer addition of filling in the shapes of the kaleidoscopes with color, I am exploring the concept of finding peace amongst the chaos.

My topographical paintings are a meditation of color—slowly transitioning from one color to another with freehanded lines coming together to form organic shapes.