Holden Willard

Holden Willard (born 1999) is a painter based in Portland. He graduated from Montserrat College of Art in May 2021 with a BFA in painting, but his interests encompass multiple mediums, including printmaking, performance, collage, and woodworking. His work is concerned with imagery that reflects the environment in which he lives. Principally a figurative artist, he strives to portray the experience of the everyday through the lens of friends and family, and to create a dialogue between the past, present, and future.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work primarily deals with the figure and its interaction within space; my studies with observation are concerned with how my sight ultimately affects the work. I consider the ebb and flow that comes with every medium’s process, determining the best way to push my understanding of it. When I approach a piece, I am mainly looking to understand and reevaluate choices. The work is always in flux with no particular attention to certain parts; instead, an awareness is placed upon the whole picture. The paintings build upon an attention to the surface; its history and change is analogous to how I perceive people, as perception is a consistent struggle.

Whether I am approaching the figure, or objects, or the space they inhabit, I treat them with the same respect and attention. I consider how light translates to color. I try to interpret the heat that the body gives off, and especially how that color can wash into the surrounding space and say something about the person. That notion is directly related to my interest in portraying how dreams might feel if you were to paint them. Passages of color are broken by line, as drawing is an intrinsic part of painting—and much drawing and erasing happens as a result. Ultimately the goal is to create an honest response to whatever I am reacting to.

I’m mainly striving towards creating a dialogue between the past, present, and future, be it through the lens of family, friends, or the environment. In my mind, these are essential devices that I utilize to create a coming-of-age narrative in Maine. Images from home, adventures of youth, fears and anxieties expressed through eyesight and posture, all in an effort of saying the unsaid.