Peter Holden

Artist statement 

I’ve loved oil painting since I was a kid in Laguna Beach watching my grandmother at her easel painting landscapes. Then there was my older brother with large canvases spread out on his bedroom floor working oil abstracts. While listening to jazz soundtracks on his Teak reel to reel, he would mask off certain sections and draw on others: text, and portraiture.

A lucky professional break took me to Amsterdam for a few years, I was still pretty young. While there I lived a few blocks from the Van Gogh Museum and the nearby Stedlijk Museum; I was able to visit them weekly. Those were incredibly formative years.

My studio practice is ongoing, a committed process. A mingling staying in the moment with a constant, fluid interaction with memory; travel experiences, readings, music, film, art and art history.

Deciding to develop or work on an image, representational or abstract, I need to be fully engaged in its conception and unique process that can take weeks or even years. Using oil, charcoal, medium. Oil stick, spray paint etc. I flow between observation, imagination and chance, wanting my work to be welcoming of imperfections made up of aggressively varied mark-making.