Halle Goldberg is an interdisciplinary painter and handpoke tattoo artist working in Brooklyn, NY and Simi Valley, CA.

My work is a mixed-media and process-based practice that combines oil painting with different textile techniques. At varied scales, the work focuses on materiality and using unstretched canvas as an experimental base. Many of the paintings are constructed using a trapunto-style quilting method to create a dimensional painting surface. In addition to these stuffed quilts, I also experiment with the use of embroidered details, patchwork construction, as well as the inclusion of tattoo and latex skins. I paint using quick, short strokes to organically build up thin layers of paint. The paintings embrace the use of limited, desaturated palettes with a focus on temperature, texture, and repeated mark-making. 

In an effort to bridge craft, trade, and traditional painting, my practice depends on a refined set of symbols that are continually revisited within the work. This manifests not only in the painted image, but in the form of the canvases themselves. Most often, these symbols are depictions of nature (primarily swallows and swans), wrought iron gates, tattoos, the body and houses. These symbols- along with the process of quilting and embroidering- represent permanence, preservation, comfort, and a return to home. Swallows, historically as the first sign of life for sailors returning home. Wrought iron as a resistant and long withstanding material, creating its own language within the patterns. Houses as places of security and belonging.  Tattoos and the body as ‘permanent’ collections of experience. These symbols all function as explorations of the discomfort of change and the desire to preserve the familiar. While the works are always deeply personal and intentional, they are not always explicit in their meaning so as to leave room for expansive interpretations.