Presented by Mills Pond House Gallery

Holden's work will be on view August 17 - September 14 in Transformations: Figures of Our Other Selves. See more of his work at https://holdenwillard.com In my work I’ve been trying to understand natural resolutions to my ideas while advancing my observational skills through study of the figure... attending to the whole rather than it’s parts. The canvas is the media, and the space In which it takes up is very important to me. There is a certain sense of responsibility that I feel when approaching whoever I decide to paint; questions of identity are constantly running through my head when I work with someone. Our other sides: identity is not a one-sided coin...and within my work I hope to capture all of the different emotions that one person holds. A process based mentality has been a key element in achieving an intimacy with my work. This level of intimacy has been reached through a more thorough analysis of my color theory. In order to obtain the quality and look that I wanted I knew that I had to sit down and mix my colors with devoted enthusiasm. Swatches and charts were made in order to understand the light and shadows within the works. I stretch and build my canvases in order to capture my initial thoughts and ideas from the first step to the last, taking a painting from nothing to something has been a widely fascinating theme for me. All of these practices have contributed to that previously stated notion of attending to the whole piece at once, rather than honing in on a part. I’ve struggled with identity all of my life, but art has always stuck with me no matter how insecure, or how lost I feel... I can always find myself coming back to the work for answers.