Brad Holland
[ARKAngel's Favourite Artists]

Brad Holland is a self taught artist whose work has appeared in publications such as Time, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Playboy and the New York Times, among others. He has painted CD covers for Ray Charles, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Billy Joel. The Washington Post has called him “an undisputed star of American Illustration," and the editors of RSVP, the artists' directory, voted him “the one artist, who in our opinion, has had the single greatest impact on the illustration field during the last twenty five years.” Writing in Print Magazine, critic Steven Heller has written, "as [Jackson] Pollock redefined plastic art, Holland has radically changed the perception of illustration.” In 1999, his paintings were the subject of a retrospective at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Clermont Ferrand France.

Beautiful ...

Brad Holland is a member of the Alliance Graphique International and co-founder of the Illustrators’ Partnership of America. In 2005, he was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame.

My first encounter with Holland's work was in one of my erotic film favourties, "9 1/2 Weeks", starring Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke.

His artwork inspired the art gallery owner, played by Basinger, to masturbate whilst thinking of her lover, played by Rourke. She is so caught in the throws of her own ecstasy, that the slide projector remote, stuck under her heaving body, keeps spinning through the brilliant imagery of Holland's thought provoking work. His paintings create a backdrop to this scene that is sad, strange and sexy, setting the course towards the movie's ultimate ending. The scene has become quite famous now. And I admit that as a young, impressionable hot chick, it certainly hotly impressed me forever! It also made me fall in love with Holland's work.

I strongly suggest giving Brad Holland a GOOGLE search and check out some of his sketches, drawings, portraits and paintings. You will probably recognize some of them.