The Temple Sisters – Holly and Ashlee Temple – work in mixed media to generateworks on paper, canvas and create small assemblages. Each work they devise is meant to engage the viewer in questions about the temporal and fluid nature of image, memory, and the cultural language of expression. 

The sisters often draw inspiration from collage artists such as Joseph Cornell, Robert Rauschenberg and Hannah Hoch but are most heavily influenced by their father, California painter Brook Temple, who studied at Yale under Joseph Albers. “Art, artists and art theory were just an everyday integral part of our lives” said Holly Temple,  “Our dad taught us Albers’ Color Theory class when we were young, and we continue to use it today”.  Ashlee Temple adds  “The relationship and placement of color – or sometimes lack of color – is a very intentional element of all our work”

Collaboration, both in applied method as well as conceptually, is at the core of their work. They each find the implicit trust  required by working in tandem to be one of the most  interesting and integral parts of their art. A shared history and shared aesthetic emerges as a partnership in paint and paper. It is their deep belief that collaboration – artist-to-artist, art-to-observer – is at the heart of the creative process.

The sisters’ works have been in more than two dozen exhibitions across the country, including New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Chicago and Denver, as well as throughout California. Holly and Ashlee Temple are both based on the Monterey Peninsula and maintain their studio in Sand City.