Stephen Holland
Stephen Holland born April 8, 1941, in the Bronx NY. He attended Industrial Arts High School in NYC, and Pratt Institute. Arriving in Santa Barbara in 1971, he made a meager living as an artist/illustrator/toymaker.
In 1991, he began a career painting portraits of professional athletes, and brought new perspective to the field with a classical form of portraiture in black and white. This new style turned heads and won awards. Named 1993 Sports Artist of the Year, by the American Sports Art Museum and Archives, from there his style evolved into gritty action portraits with colorful, pop art backgrounds. He became the “official artist” for Muhammad Ali, and several professional championship teams.
After years of working with oil and spray paints, they took a toll on his health. He withdrew from his studio to heal. His enthusiasm for commercial art waned. He longed to paint other things: a stream of consciousness, which spoke a seasoned view of life in all its complexities, a theme he explored in his youth and throughout his career. Painting with acrylics, he began creating a series he calls The Longneck Circus. Characters with elongated necks, musicians, animals, and circus folk, came forth from his mind. Not always knowing what they mean, they just came pouring out. Some are blatant political statements, others simple expressions of joy. From 2018 until current, he has completed more than seventy-five paintings in this series.
This concept has been brewing since my youth in paintings, ink drawings and 3-dimensional works. It has emerged throughout my lifetime of making art. These characters have appeared in my sculpted toys, in various circus parade paintings, computer drawings, right up to the social commentary that some of these paintings are. There’s a mix of exaggerated features on characters, and animals interspersed with people, expressing my belief that animals are sentient, at least as conscious as humans.
The lyricalness is felt, experienced, and remembered from my life –– a sense of the real in the unreal. I want something different all the time; colors that excite me, shapes, forms, and movement that I can dance to, characters that I can have fun with, this is satisfying to me.
I love them raunchy and complex. My aim is diversity, imagination, and laughter. I let my mind run rampant with energy and humor. The figures spill out of their cells. They’re often inspired by various music, current events, whatever comes into my head at the moment of drawing. There must always be fun in it for me, including creating the satire even though the subject may be grim or hard to swallow. It comes in a stream of mischievous consciousness, I don’t think about it much, it just flows out.