The sirens are wailing on the streets below Laurel Holloman's
downtown LA studio, and she's struggling to make herself heard. But
she really wants to set the record straight.
"I think maybe I shouldn't identify as bisexual. I'm just not
sure it'd be right to use that label again. I used it in my 20's
because I was trying to be honest. I had an experience after I
shotTwo Girls in Love[Laurel's breakthrough film role over 15 years
ago] and I thought it was a possibility. I guess I thought I could
be bisexual. But then it never happened again. I've never had
arelationshipwith a woman so all my gay friends are like, you can't
use that label. You're a straight girl that had a bi-curious
hic-cup. That's what Leisha [Hailey, akaThe L Word'sAlice]
says."
I don't need to tell you that this is sensitive ground. For six
seasons on TV'sThe L WordLaurel formed half of the sacrosanct
relationship at the core of the show's beating heart. She was Tina,
indivisible from Bette for TiBette fans the world over. Tina
was, however, a bisexual character. The show's fan-base is
predominately a lesbian one, an audience who was previously starved
of any media presence, real or fictional. So when Tina Kennard
returned to men in Season 4, seemingly trading Bette Porter in for,
heaven forbid, Henry, most of her screen friends and some of her
fans gave up on her. Albeit temporarily. Laurel now says of this
storyline "it wasn't a story that was explored. There are always
shades of grey." Bisexuality, it seems, can be a political
minefield. So Laurel's keen to extrapolate:
"Thing is, I know that by backing off that label, it could look
like I'm afraid. But, as an older woman I'm very clear about my
sexuality. I'm more solid in my identity, I never question it. But
I'm also a very open person, maybe naively open… I'm comfortable in
my skin. I don't need a bunch of smoke and mirrors. I consider
myself straight, I guess, but… I hate that label too. I hate all
labels!"
Something Tina Kennard would no doubt agree with. But more of
her later.
It isn't surprising that Laurel Lisa Holloman, a southern belle
from North Carolina who is yet to turn 40, hates labels - the more
open she is, the harder it gets to pin one on her. And she is very
open. She's even an avid Twitterer. At the time of press, she and
her husband of nine years are in the midst of a trial separation,
so she's not entirely sure if that classifies her as a single
mother to Lola (aged 6) and Nala (2 and ½) or not. She's spent the
last 20 years carving a very successful niche for herself as an
indie film / cutting edge TV actress. And yet here she is, keeping
us all on our toes by suddenly this summer reviving a prolific
passion for abstract art and creating enormous, stunning,
colour-rich canvases that are selling to collectors the world over
via her studio website. Which begs the question, were the enormous
upheavals in her personal life what sparked this seismic shift in
career?
"I was in the middle of a transition. I went back to [Tribeca
in] New York where I first started acting and felt most creative,
got a painter's loft and single parented. I didn't go out a lot -
there was a lot of loneliness. It was like a cocoon. I created this
art cocoon where I forced myself to paint every day. In it I purged
a lot of the sadness, which possibly could be the pain of my
separation. All I know is that it was like a clinging on to
whatever my identity was before I got married and had kids. This
creative person. I felt I was getting back almost to the person I
was right out of college. And that's why I was painting."
So she shunned everything except her inner life. It sounds
therapeutic. "Completely therapeutic. The two things that make it
really therapeutic are the music and the repetitiveness of the
brush strokes. And just the richness and the sensuousness of the
colour. When I'm painting and I'm in a groove, I have music on
really loud.Bulletwas one of the first paintings I sold, it's all
based on this Damien Rice song9 Crimes. All I did was listen to
Damien Rice all summer. It was ridiculous how much I listened to
it."
If you know the album, you know how heart-wringing yet
beautifully sad it is: Rice's tortured voice quivering with emotion
alongside that of his estranged girlfriend Lisa Hannigan.
Refreshingly, Laurel doesn't flinch from owning such emotional
rawness: "In theTribeca Seriesthere's a lot of sadness. Tons of
sadness in those paintings. I listened to Radiohead, to Travis… I'm
an emotional person. I operate from my heart, from a spontaneous
place. I don't always react from my head. I think if I want to act
or paint it's not a bad thing."
For a moment I'm worried, is this an either / or situation, the
acting or the painting? "I'm hitting a spot in my acting
career where I need to combine it with something else if I'm going
to stay happy. I don't know what the future holds but I do see
myself painting as an older woman. I don't know how it will
manifest. All I know is I can't stop. I feel like I did when I
first started acting. God, I have so much to learn - that craving
of the learning and the newness of something.
"And I paint with everything. From sable brushes that cost $100
to brushes from the hardware store, my hands and fingers and
everything from a diaper to a baby wipe. It's all very tactile for
me. I get real messy. It's so opposite to acting in that way."
Listening to her talk I realise the painting is not only an
artistic passion, but a personal rediscovery, as hokey as that
sounds. A reaction against her alter-ego, the perfectly groomed
Angeleno she played for six years on TV. Tina's Hollywood vibe was
probably spilling over into Laurel's own world with all those red
carpet appearances. Laurel's painting allows a private return to
the passionate, feisty, jeans and t-shirt indie tomboy who's
desperate to get her hands dirty, only this time not with the
contents of a stinky nappy. She once described her southern
childhood as "very Sally Mann, i.e. lots of childhood
skinny-dipping, painting fences, catching snakes. Somehow painting
brings all of that back for me." To paint, and especially to paint
large, bold, complexly layered canvases, is to be free of those
prissy Hollywood expectations about appearance that taint the
creative process. Yes, her work is still judged, but she owns the
work completely in a way an actor never can:
"I really love painting because it's 100% mine. I wanted to have
something where I was being creative but I could also have control
over two things: the time it takes to create and complete
creative control over what it is. You don't have that in
film-making. In film-making you have to collaborate with everyone
else."
Does that make it more scary? "Yeah, oh yeah. It's always really
hard for me to show a painting. I think at the beginning when
you're putting yourself out there and you're scared to death and
you're worrying you're going to be judged, you have to say 'am I
happy?' And if the answer is 'I'm happy', you just keep going. I've
picked something that is incredibly subjective, and the thing is,
I'm totally happy."
That said, Laurel isn't about to walk away from her Hollywood
profile and its initial role in the success of her art website. "In
some ways it's a blessing as it's a wonderful launch for this. The
fans have been amazing. But as an artist, to keep painting and
producing work that I'm proud of… I want it to be just about the
art. I feel very adamant about learning and improving myself and
studying. Instead of using the semi-celebrity ofThe L Word."
That admirably modest attitude to her work brings us back to
Tina Kennard again. It's true thatL Wordfans are known to be
fiercely loyal, which only makes the very vocal abandonment of Tina
by a few when she had her bisexual hic-cup all the more surprising.
But Laurel is quick to defend their reaction:
"I don't think Tina would be with a guy who cuts his toenails in
the living room and watches that much football. And had the most
boring straight friends in the world! I think Tina was truly a
bisexual in that she had real, long-term relationships with men.
But the love of her life was Bette. Politically she identified as
being lesbian, sexually she was comfortable with men. That story
was very plot driven. It created this massive crazy division
between the straight and the gay friends. I found it a little
unbelievable that Tina's friends would change because she was with
a man."
Not a great depiction of a bisexual's experience, you could say.
"The important lesson is that we need to accept the fluidity of
people's sexuality. I wish in several places we had worked a little
harder to find out what the truths are. Like the Kinsey Scale - you
can move along it and you're more gay or move the scale back and
you're right in the middle and bi. There's fluidity. Labels don't
always apply to everybody."
Ah, those labels again. And that's one of the things I love
about Laurel - she won't settle for an easy one-size-fits-all label
if she can deconstruct, analyse and dissect a subject down to its
barest bones. Exposing layer upon layer of diverse texture and
colour, just like in her paintings, with the honesty and curiosity
of an artist's mind. And if you're wondering where this drive to
analyse comes from, then once again look no further than her
childhood: "You could say I've been in therapy my entire life
because my mum is a psychologist and she's my best friend. You get
free therapy the whole time."
Maybe that's what makes Laurel such a rigorous actor, such a
passionate artist and such a wonderfully comfortable person to
spend time with. She's already processed so much of the dross that
can clog up a Hollywood existence. She doesn't need that bunch of
smoke and mirrors because she's dealt with the crap, she's solid in
her identity. Does she have a personal mantra to keep her on track,
to navigate the cacophonic Hollywood highways that have brought her
to this point in life?
"Every day I strive to get to a place where I'm not effected by
the external world, and I don't use the external world to define or
tell me who I am. I strive for a state of equanimity and calm and a
state of grace, so I can be free of definitions. If you are free,
then you can create beautiful things. It's really just shutting out
the noise."
We hear you Laurel.
This article first appeared in DIVA magazine, December
2010.
