About the Artist

Born in 1970 in Dublin , second daughter of Pauline Bewick and Dr. Pat Melia. Holly studied Hot Glass at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin.
In 1989, Holly took a year out to travel to the South Pacific with her mother and sister Poppy Melia and following this experience both she and her sister had their first exhibition of South Seas inspired work in the Rubicon Gallery, Dublin and subsequently in the Catto Gallery, London.

Holly Melia working in her studio

Moving to Italy in 1992 to study Italian, Holly worked for six years at the famous Rampini Ceramics Studio in Radda in Chianti.
Now living permanently in the beautiful Chianti Classico area of Tuscany with her husband Luca Bellucci and their two daughters Chiara and Giada, Holly paints full time in her studio adjacent to her restored country home.

Her continuous passion for painting wild animals, flowers and fauna encountered in the surrounding Italian countryside or on her travels further afield, is united by the closeness that she feels to all her subjects, be it a hostile porcupine or fox or a fragile wild flower.
Holly’s subjects fill the page and often they don’t entirely fit on the handmade paper she may be using!
Despite living in Italy, Holly makes sure to spend as much time as she can at her family home in County Kerry, where she paints the Irish nature that surrounds her.

Holly has exhibited with great success in Ireland, London and Italy and has collectors in America, Germany and the Czech Rep. Her work is included in many important collections, including the Palazzo Terranova in Perugia, Italy and well known writer/philosopher’s, Charles Handy.

EXHIBITIONS: