50 PATRONMAGAZINE.COM
BY TERRI PROVENCAL
COLOR
MY WORLD
SUPERB TECHNIQUE, ATYPICAL STYLE, AND INIMITABLE HUES MARK
TOM HOLLAND: A SURVEY AT SAMUEL LYNNE GALLERIES.
he son of a portrait artist, Berkley-based
painter Tom Holland is an effusive colorist.
A couple of years shy of octogenarian status
and married to his high school sweetheart,
Holland’s epoxy on aluminum, as well as
Plexiglas and oil paintings, are included in permanent
collections at the Art Institute of Chicago, Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art,
the Whitney Museum of American Art, and many
others, making the artist an abiding and important
figure in the California landscape of contemporary
Tartists. In October, Samuel Lynne Galleries offers a robust survey of his work. Karen Bivens, director and partner of Samuel Lynne informs, “This survey gives a really good overview of his historical importance.”
Mentored early in his career by David Park, a pioneer
of the Bay Area Figurative School of painting, Holland’s
work was initially greatly influenced by the late artist,
who died an early death from bone cancer at 49. Park
was a professor at University of California at Berkley
and was responsible for getting Holland admitted as a
student following an impromptu viewing of his hand-delivered landscape paintings. While Holland was Park’s
assistant he was introduced to Richard Diebenkorn and
Elmer Bischoff, Park’s contemporaries and comrades
and the first generation of the Bay Area Figurative
Movement in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
