Born and educated in New York City, he attended The School of Art and Design, Art Students League, The School of Visual Arts, and Pratt Institute. Holland has garnered the respect given to a master painter, witnessed by the numerous commissions and accolades he receives in the field of music and sports, including The American Sport Art Museum and Archives, Los Angeles Kings, ’96 Olympics, The GRAMMY’s, LA Dodgers, Major League Baseball, Baltimore Ravens, Colorado Avalanche and proud, private collectors worldwide...
From Ali to Yogi, from Bogart to Brando, from Eastwood to Evel Knievel, Holland is the master of painting the “tough guys” of sports and celebrity. There is struggle and triumph, grit and glory, humanity and spirit, in every Holland painting.
Growing up in the mean streets of the Bronx in the 50’s, Holland brings the energy of this influence to his professional career. The quality of his work and his popularity rank him among the most successful and popular current American painters.
Standing in front of one of Holland’s five-to-six foot peerless portraits, the viewer experiences the painter’s passion for his subject. His “in your face” compositions have an uncanny sense of the moment that visually bursts from the canvas. This edginess is further enhanced by his ferocious painting techniques: bold line work, aggressive color and daring shapes and forms. He’s a master of painting black on black and coarse whites.
His painting style evolved from a signature black, white and gray, through a innovative interpretation of retro, to featuring the brighter colors of sports action. His backgrounds grew to include mixed media collages of acrylic paint, paper, stencil work and his original digital posters–– a texture which some confess, “subliminally impress the painting with sound.”
Born and educated in New York City, he attended The School of Art and Design, Art Students League, The School of Visual Arts, and Pratt Institute. Holland has garnered the respect given to a master painter, witnessed by the numerous commissions and accolades he receives in the field of music and sports, including The American Sport Art Museum and Archives, Los Angeles Kings, ’96 Olympics, The GRAMMY’s, LA Dodgers, Major League Baseball, Baltimore Ravens, Colorado Avalanche and proud, private collectors worldwide.
Yet, nothing is more acknowledging than the grateful recognition given him by the people he paints––those who have given to society, the example of their greatness–– as they experience their legacy preserved in a “Stephen Holland” work of art.
Like Norman Rockwell, Seuss personally created every rough sketch, preliminary drawing, final line drawing and finished work for each page of every project he illustrated. Despite the technical and budgetary limitations of color printing during the early and mid-twentieth century, Dr. Seuss the artist was meticulous about color selection. He created specially numbered color charts and elaborate color call-outs to precisely accomplish his vision for each book. Saturated reds and blues, for example, were carefully chosen for The Cat in the Hat to attract and maintain the visual attention of a six-year-old audience. By the time Seuss’s book career took off, sharp draftsman skills were evident in drawings. His ability to move a storyline ahead via illustrations filled with tension, movement and color became a hallmark component of his work, and the surreal images that unfolded over six decades became the catalyst for a humorous and inspired learning experience.
Artist Leo Rijn, the inaugural sculptor for the Dr. Seuss Tribute Collection I, was selected to launch this project due to his prized work with some of today’s top talent in the world of film, entertainment and the visual arts (including Tim Burton, Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg). Rijn has been identified as one of today’s brightest sculpting talents because of his ability to breathe life into the written word and successfully transform two-dimensional ideas into three-dimensional works of art. Universal Studios commissioned Leo to develop and oversee the creation of numerous maquette scale models for the Monumental Dr. Seuss Sculptures at Seuss Landing in Orlando, Florida. Leo was instrumental in the art direction for many of the sculpted characters and buildings now on display at this permanent Seuss attraction. His strikingly accurate Seuss works embody a masterful and intuitive Seussian sensibility, establishing him as a leading talent in interpretive sculpting.
Seuss embarked on an ingenious project in the early 1930s as he evolved from two-dimensional artworks to three-dimensional sculptures. What was most unusual for these mixed-media sculptures was the use of real animal parts including beaks, antlers and horns from deceased Forest Park Zoo animals where Seuss’s father was superintendent. Unorthodox Collection of Taxidermy was born in a cramped New York apartment and included a menagerie of inventive creatures with names like the “Two Horned Drouberhannis,” “Andulovian Grackler,” and “Semi-Normal Green-Lidded Fawn.” Shortly after Seuss created this unique collection of artworks, Look Magazine dubbed Seuss “The World’s Most Eminent Authority on Unheard-Of Animals.” To this day, Seuss’s Unorthodox Collection of Taxidermy remains as some of the finest examples of his inventive and multi-dimensional creativity.
Illustrator by day, surrealist by night, Seuss created a body of irrepressible work that redefines this American icon as an iconographic American artist. Yet, the Secret Art often shows a side of the artist that most readers, familiar with him through his classic children’s books, have never seen. This collection, created over a period of more than 60 years, encompasses the entirety of Seuss’s multi-dimensional talent. The artistic golden thread highlighted throughout this collection is apparent in each wildly imaginative and surreal Secret Art image. The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss is an inimitable collection of artworks created at night for his own personal enjoyment. These works were rarely, if ever, exhibited during his lifetime and provide a deeper glimpse into the art and life of this celebrated American Icon.
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