Holly Carr is a nationally acclaimed visual and performance artist known for her distinctive silk paintings and immersive large-scale installations. She has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and has designed sets for theatre productions and public art installations. In 2019, she received the Theatre Nova Scotia Merritt Award for Outstanding Set Design for Half Cracked, a collaboration between Neptune Theatre and Eastern Front. Her performance practice includes live painting with orchestras, including Symphony Nova Scotia, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, and most recently the National Arts Centre Orchestra. She has also exhibited, taught, and performed internationally in Peru, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
Her landmark installation, Light in the Forest, is a monumental painted silk environment that has evolved into a multimedia mental wellness project touring throughout Nova Scotia. It has also been adapted into an award-winning children’s book and companion app.
In partnership with the Nova Scotia Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, Holly created a permanent touring Light in the Forest exhibit. Most recently exhibited at the Acadia University Art Gallery. She also collaborated with the Portapique Community and the Canadian Mental Health Association (Nova Scotia Division) to create The Comfort Tree, a story trail project later published as a children’s book and selected by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre as one of the Best Children’s Books of Spring 2025.
For her contributions to youth and mental wellness, Holly received the King Charles III Coronation Medal in 2024, The Paul Harris Fellow award from the Kentville Rotary, 2026 and an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities from Acadia University, 2026
Her work is held in numerous public and private collections. She holds a BFA and BAEd from NSCAD University.
-Written by Alan Bateman
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Where are you located?
Woodside Road, Canning, Annapolis Valley, at the base of the North Mountain.
What do you do?
I’m a full-time artist, painter, designer, and performer. I paint live with orchestras, create installations for galleries and museums, design for theatre, and illustrate and write children’s books.
What are you presently working on?
I have always worked on multiple creative projects at once, continuing to produce new work for galleries, including our home gallery, Bateman-Carr Gallery. For the past seven years, I have been creating Light in the Forest, a multidisciplinary initiative that explores the intersection of art, nature, and emotional well-being, bringing together many of the skills I have developed throughout my career. It has grown into a multi-media experience that includes live performance featuring animation, original music, storytelling, dance, and live painting, as well as an app, two children’s books, a touring museum and gallery exhibit, and an educational program. Working primarily with youth, I have been fortunate to share it with audiences across Nova Scotia. This fall, I will present Light in the Forest at Cape Breton University as an Artist in Residence, while launching its accompanying educational program at teachers’ conferences. I am also completing a new multimedia production based on my children’s book The Comfort Tree, which will premiere on August 16th at the BRAVO Children’s Theatre Festival at the Bella Rose. For more information about Light in the Forest, visit lightintheforest.ca.
Where can we find your work?
You can find my work at hollycarr.com, Bateman-Carr Gallery in Canning, Secord Gallery in Halifax, and Harvest Gallery in Wolfville.
