Joseph Holston, Jr.

Painter and Printmaker Born 1944

Joseph Holston's cubist abstractionist style has evolved over a fine arts career spanning more than twenty-five years. Born in Washington, DC, his career as a painter and printmaker began wit years of self-study, augmented by study with renowned artists Marcos Blahove in Washington, and with Richard Goetz in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He also attended Howard University and Montgomery College in Maryland, and enjoyed invaluable advice and encouragement from Harlem Renaissance Artists Lois Mailou and James Wells.

Mr. Holston is a critically acclaimed artist who has exhibited at numerous museums and institutions These include the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio; the Smithsonian Institution's Anacostia Museum, Washington, DC; the Fort Worth Museum of Fine Art, Texas; the Afro-American Museum, Philadelphia; the King-Tisdell Cottage Museum, Savannah, Georgia; the Arts program Gallery at the University of Maryland; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; the APEX Museum, Atlanta, Georgia; and the DuSable Museum, Chicago. His work was also included in the exhibition "American Painters in Paris , and the Department of State's "Art in the Embassies program.

He has also exhibited and been a guest lecturer at DePauw University, the University of Maryland, the University of Dar Es Salaain, Howard University, Bowling Green State University, and the Visual Arts Center of NW Florida.

His work has been commissioned by the AFL-CIO, the Miller Brewing Company, the National Urban Coalition, the National Medical Association, Gallo Winery, and the Washington Urban League.

Holston was selected to be the official artist of the Chicago Jazz Festival in 1996 and 1997.

Works by Joseph Holston are included in numerous museum, institution and private collections. Among these are the permanent collection of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library at the University of Texas, the Banneker-Douglass Museum, Annapolis, Maryland; the King-Tisdell Cottage Museum, DePauw University, Howard University, Montgomery County, Maryla4 the George Meany Center for Labor Studies, the Hubert H. Humphrey Collection, the Evans-Tibbs Collection, and New York City's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Holston's works are also included in many private collections, including those of Michael Jordan, Jesse Jackson, William Moyers, Wynton Marsalis, Cicely Tyson, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Vernon Jordan, Patti LaBelle, Angela Bassett, Bryant Gumbel and Leonard Coleman, the President of the National Baseball League.

Artist Statement 

"I have spent my entire career working to perfect my craft as a multi-medium artist. I started out painting and drawing. But as I began to explore other mediums, I discovered that each has its own unique characteristics, its own unique capacity to give voice to my work in a way tat no other medium could. My challenge is to master the medium's technical aspects, while at the same time recognizing that it contains within it a spirit that drives me in the creation of a particular and individual work of art. For me, for example, the challenge in etching is to make a cold metal plate come to life."

"I enjoy where I am now in my career. I have had to work hard in order to be able to create. I consider that my art career has been divided in two parts. During the first phase, I learned to represent - to create works that copied nature. The second period has required me to delve deeply into my spiritual self and to find my own voice. I seek to use different mediums to speak in a way that never has been spoken before."

 

View Joe's Art