The Landscape Painter

An Autobiography 1974 through 1994
Jim Holl, 2009
Publisher: Charta.

ISBN: 8881587297, 9788881587292

Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.75

Pages: 127
Purchase
Purchase from Amazon

The Landscape Painter

Jim Holl
58 pages, text and 23 images

 

This book recounts my efforts to come to terms, to understand through art, the dichotomy between thinking and feeling, art and life, artifice and authenticity. I came of age in the mid-1970s. At that time the course of modern art had been, depending on the date chosen, evolving for more than a hundred years. By the beginning of the 1970s, in some quarters, modern art had been declared as having reached its apotheosis.

     I came to consider art-making with this dialogue in mind, and by these theories my artistic decisions were influenced. In this essay I have referenced and credited many of the writers who have examined the course of modernism and the subsequent post-modern era. I write this memoir as I make art, form a personal point of view. This essay tells the story of my development and reflections in relation to the backdrop of the events and theories that I experienced when I came from Seattle to live and work in New York City between 1974 and 1994. Herein I show my journey in art and life in word and deed.

     To make art is to be engaged in a dialogue with oneself. Life may require one’s application to many services but to make art is always to apply to one’s self-realization. I recommend to my students that this dialogue cannot be taken away by anyone or any event. Making art is a process that gives oneself meaning. The artist engaged in the process of self-discovery is at the beginning of the story of modern art. Art may address the self, culture, or history, but it cannot be done alone. If art isn’t communicated it is stillborn.