Harry Holland is widely regarded as one of Britain’s best craftsmen, producing technically brilliant and very beautiful paintings. His style is distinctive and immediately recognizable, something which every artist seeks. The paintings are suggestive in the sense that they imply situations, events, or relationships that are not directly expressed; this imbues them with an engaging sense of mystery.
A master of painting, Holland works with uncompromising commitment and sincerity to produce art that is intense and rewarding. He has a predominant interest in the formal and technical aspect of painting. His contemporaneity is based on the study of classical values applied to modern metropolitan life.
Born in Glasgow he spent his childhood in various parts of the UK settling in London in 1949. He trained at St. Martin’s School of Art from 1965-69 where he first exhibited in 1969. In 1973 he moved to Cardiff where he lives and paints today.
“I believe that the western tradition of visual art is rich enough to encompass and evoke any version of the human condition, emotional or imaginary, we will come across in the future, as it has done in the past. I am in that tradition, and love the ideas, the spirit and the craft that have been developed over the last four hundred years, particularly the nineteenth century. Humour, fiction, irony, ambiguity and artificiality all have a role in my work”.
Public Commissions
Cardiff City Council: Cardiff Castle Mural; Greater London Council, Portrait of Illtyd Harrington, ILEA Chairman; Welsh Arts Council: Print Commission (The Final Proof Exhibition); Portrait of Lord Callaghan.
Public Collections
Tate Gallery, London Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; European Parliament Collection; National Museum of Wales; British Museum, London; Belgian National Collection; Heineken Collection, Amsterdam; Newport Museum and Art Gallery; Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea; Scottish equitable, Edinburgh; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Contemporary Arts Society; Welsh Arts Council, Contemporary Arts Society for Wales; University of Wales; BBC Wales; Gatmore Investment Management Ltd; National Portrait Gallery, Canada; Senate of the Italian Republic, Palazzo Madama, Rome and many corporate and private collections worldwide.
