Congratulations to Tom Holmes for earning his place as a Finalist in the Boynes Emerging Artist Award 7th Edition!

Who are you?

It's curious. That notion that I was an “Artist” was always a primary part of my identity, it was never really in question. Now, along the way there was no shortage of insecurities in the corners -“am I any good, who the hell is gonna care, how am I gonna make a living out of this.” But, there was a certainty planted in the center that “an Artist” was my vocation. Knowing one’s purpose early on can be a bit of a curse, as I’ve not had the wandering tangential interests that might have taught me other skills. I got as good an Art education as a poor boy could afford. Lived in LA, Mexico City, NYC with stints in Europe. About a decade ago I left Brooklyn to live in a Radical Faerie community in rural TN. I rather like being where it’s at or in the middle of nowhere, it seems. I’m tucked into the back woods and my life is remarkably quiet now, but I’ve never really left NYC in my mind.

I’ve just finished up the work for a show that ships to Berlin next week and still, in my head, I’ve made work for a NYC audience.

What inspired you to utilize painting as a medium?

I’ve been such a reluctant painter. I made my first oil painting just about three years ago -I picked it up pretty quick’. I never once made a painting in  art school -not a one. Mine were bookish conceptual programs. My mentors were first generation Conceptual artists that had a certain disdain  for abstraction and the commercial aspect, of painting especially. I’ve come to think the conceptual model is quite bankrupt, but I’m still engaged with a  certain notion of transmission, metaphor, & philosophical proposition that  owes something to my predecessors that were wrestling with aspects  outside the visual field. 

I’ve no real allegiance to paint. The studio practice, the autonomy and expediency that paint provides a picture-maker is quite remarkable and meets the needs of the work. But, if tomorrow, the work is better suited to plaster, or digital projection, or who-knows-what, I’ll take on a different medium. Honestly y’all, if I thought there was anything interesting  happening in contemporary painting I might not be up for it. Painting, at the  moment, feels untended, wide open. 

Within the museum experience, I really have an appetite for the old paintings. They keep me engaged with all that paint can do. The lil’ 19th c.  German sky studies, or a good Frans Hals, or a good Franz Klein for that  matter, can be genuinely exhilarating.

How would you describe your work?

Memento Mori. 

The works function as a mediation on our shared inevitable. If we’ve  nothing in common but that we will surely die, let’s start there, and attempt  to relate. 

I’m utilizing metaphor, a device long out of fashion. Metaphor is a tough sell. To point to a halloween skeleton and say “that’s all of human history,”  the PowerPuff Girls “the Fates,” it takes some nerve. It ain’t easy being cheesy. However, there seems a fundamental access to truth, the illusory nature of phenomena, in the most ordinary things.

Can you discuss the inspiration and thought process behind "Untitled  Arrangement"?

“Inspiration is for amateurs.” I still think that is probably true. Waiting around for a good idea is maddening. Good ideas fall into dirty hands.

I keep busy. It’s the wonderful thing about my divorce from the conceptual model. My hands, my eyes, are doing the thinking. There is less and less cognitive construction of the work. The work has its needs and I, in many ways, subjugate my own needs to meet the needs of the work. The ol’ persistent bohemian myth of being struck by some maniac fit of mad inspiration is just so much performative horseshit.

It’s far more like a process of fermentation. The artist feeds the mind with all the sugary goodness of images from the street, museum, daydreams, the scrolling feed, and then in the churn of playful hands it is distilled into a potent spirit, so very different from the ingredients that initiated it. Enthusiasm, curiosity, discipline, volition, gratitude, observation, all far more important aspects to artistry.

Can you walk us through the technical steps of creating "Untitled  Arrangement"?

Like other artists out of contemporary conceptual programs I had to teach myself to paint. And, it really ain’t that hard. It took me about a year to get competent in oils. The old adage “it’s not what you paint, but how it’s painted” I tend to be suspicious of now. It’s both, what you paint, and all the subject problems, and equally, how it’s painted.

Only other artists are interested in such technical matters. I paint with rather fat, pigment dense, unthinned, oils. I work with a limited palette of five colors only (oh, occasionally I use those new neon oil colors.) It’s usually on clear linen, alla prima, bravura, brushy, tonal. I tend to keep blacks dark and reserve tinted whites only for highlights. If I’ve any proficiency it’s in color mixing. I aspire to work in subtle tonal shifts. I try to really pay attention to the quality of light and the sheer economy of brushwork of artists like Zorn, Singer Sargent, Antonio Mancini. I work relatively quickly. I neither have the patience nor do I care about the china plate-like quality of glazing. I want to get it all down once in a decisive stroke, the color intrinsically bound to the mark. I’m not dependent on some silly photo finish-fetish repro. All those over-glazed paintings invariably look like lotion commercials to me.

What do you hope to communicate to an audience with your work?

Well, it ain’t ‘bout communication, per se. If a work is wholly reliant on the verbal, it’s a recipe for failure. Language is our crudest tool. The best works  arrive just at the edge of an artist’s agency. It’s a bit more like “transmission.” There is, in the studio, an earnest attempt to sustain a state  of conscientiousness that gets embedded, set in the wet color, the formation of metaphor, the visual phenomena that arrives “as is' ' in the  work. In the best work, that mind-set is somehow available to the viewer’s intuition. It’s “transmitted” through time. Now listen, that got a touch  mystical, I might need to dial it back. It's so rare an event to be an anomaly, but one can stand in front of a great art work and have one’s knees go weak. I’ve known it experientially, I know it in my bones. Face a grand Tiepolo and see if it doesn’t put you on your back, tickle your fancy,  up-skirt ya with a cloud or feather. 

That’s what I’m after. 

Have you experimented with other mediums?

Yeah, as mentioned, my gateway into art-making was really via conceptual performance and video. There were a few things that turned me off about the painting department. One, the faculty were these tired ol’ bunch of 80’s painters (that still feel irrelevant.) Secondly, my high-minded collegiate politics were offended by the market-ready aspect of these pretty-lil objects. And finally, I just wasn’t buying what the pencil-jockey types were selling with the dead-end goal of a typical subject “well-rendered.” I still don’t buy it. Experimentation beats virtuosity. Metaphor beats the didactic. OK, I’m just gonna go in here. I don’t love this company I’m in. An aging white-dude, sable-brush-neurotic, painting a vaguely sexualized ethnic other -eye roll.

I’m feeling the defensive need (as an aging-white-kween LOL) to differentiate myself, my intentions, here. What I’m after, betting pictures still have an avenue to meaning, is really oh so very different than a mere practitioner. The mandate of the subject is a great deal of artistry. Painting the stock image well -well, that ain’t much.

Can you talk about your biggest learning experience during the process of creating your work?

All painting is abstract painting.

In a practical sense, just compressing space into a 2D representation is an act of abstracting the dimensional world, but I mean more culturally the contemporary eye sees all painting, representational and otherwise, through the radicalized lens of AbEx, New York School abstraction. That is to say, within the museum, I can’t unsee the quick edges of an 18th c. painter like Gilbert Stuart, or the haze of Turner without Rothko (oh dear, that is a rather soppy example.) The calcified divisions made between representational and abstract painting are meaningless within the context of the studio. Paint will do what paint wants to do. It is the eye that is so ready, anxious, to be deceived. My greatest lesson has been this: in paint application, in subject, in metaphor -abstraction happens.

Can you tell something you wish you had known before or when you began your career that would have really helped?

For some time after school I functioned under the delusion that the Art World worked like a b-end entertainment industry -that there was some gatekeeper that would discover you and then, and only then, did the opportunity to create work begin. What rubbish. The opportunity to make work arrives in every moment you’re in the studio. There is no gig, there is no dealer, there is no sale, that makes much of a difference in terms of a studio practice. Self discipline, abandoning hope of glory, that’s where studio work begins. The real artistic gains are extending, like a dancer, beyond where you thought you could extend. Good work is its own reward. I’m fond of the ol’ Katz quote “Ya get the audience ya deserve.” My only addition to the sentiment is “eventually.” Be ever so patient. Keep the faith that good work will get the audience it deserves, eventually.

What projects are you working on currently?

I’m about to ship a show to Berlin. I’ve made a painting show for Efremidis Gallery that opens Feb. 4 ’23, fingers crossed. It will be the first figurative work I’ve shown. Generally, I think art does a piss-poor job at narrative, but these portraits of kids veer unduly close to the allegorical. The work is still too wet to say much more about.

Ya know, you can have anxiety before a good show or anxiety before a mediocre show -‘cause anxiety is anxiety.

We’ll see if the work speaks.

What is your dream project or piece you hope to accomplish?

Oh I’m still waiting for that MoMA show. I hope their email didn’t go to spam.

Lastly, I like to ask everyone what advice they would give to their fellow artists/photographers, what is your advice?

In nocte consilium.

Meaning, in the night there is council, just sleep on it. If an artist can delay the immediate gratification, validation, of putting a piece up on TikTok, IG, the work can settle, mature. So often the work needs to rest a beat before you continue, or evaluate it, finish or abandon it. Knowing the difference between your needs and the work’s needs is an essential part of a studio practice. Meeting your needs and also the needs of the work is an essential aspect of life.

Put the colors where they go.

That is to say, lay down the paint with a courage found in this moment, not the next stroke or the last. Show up, arrive, into this expansive moment and the work will make itself.

Observe the world “as it is.”

Not as you fancy it “ought to be.” As it is! Observe the ever-changing phenomena with a choiceness observation. Aware of the sensations within one’s own body, observe, deeply observe.

To view more of Tom Holmes’ work

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