Stephen Holland

“Sports Heights in High Contrast” – 1993 Sport Artist of the Year

From Ali to Yogi, from Bogart to Brando, from Eastwood to Evel Knievel, the “tough guys” of sports and celebrity are what Holland excels at painting. Yet his path to glory in high gear as a painter of the toughs didn’t start out that way. As a boy in the Bronx in the late 1940s and early ’50s, Holland was temporarily handicapped and unable to participate in sports. In high school, while he sat and watched his friends play, he kept his pencil and paper nearby and sketched the action, imagining what they felt.

As a young artist in New York City, Holland attended The School of Art and Design, the Art Students League, The School of Visual Arts, and Pratt Institute. Although abstract expressionism was the popular style of the times, Holland had a passion for figurative painting. Starting out, Holland could not afford to hire live models, so he drew human studies from photos in boxing magazines because the action was intense and the highly developed athletic bodies were visible and offered the perfect images for the feelings he wanted to capture in paintings. Holland moved to San Francisco in the 1960s and became involved in the hippie scene of Haight-Ashbury and the Summer of Love. In the 1970s, Holland worked at commercial art and raising a family. It was not until 1989 when Holland received a commission for a series of paintings from the Los Angeles Kings that he considered devoting himself full-time to a career painting the professional athlete. Holland joined a Santa Monica gallery specializing in sports and entertainment art, and his course was clear.

In the early ’90s, Holland and his wife J’Nelle began self-publishing limited edition art prints, beginning with Holland’s painting of Muhammad Ali, and more editions of other athletes soon followed. His signature black and white style set him apart from other sport artists, and the paintings quickly became hot commodities among celebrities and collectors.

The American Sport Art Museum and Archives in Alabama named Holland their 1993 Sport Artist of the Year. Among many honors, his works are featured regularly on ABC’s 60 Minutes specials and on NBC’s Sunday Night Football biographies. In 2009, the Denver Avalanche hockey team chose Holland as its artist, commissioning ten paintings to capture its history. Today, the quiet boy on the sidelines has found his place at the center of sports history.

“Holland’s list of painted subjects has become a (sports) hall of fame of its own… And when it comes to the biggest names… Well, they just ain’t at the top, if they have yet to be captured by Holland.”
Limelight Agency, March 4, 2009

Stephen Holland – “Sports Heights in High Contrast” – 1993 Sport Artist of the Year

“I like the drama of sports the way you see it on a TV close-up – like a slow motion replay. I like to freeze-frame the image and display it.”
Stephen Holland, Vintage Gallery Bios

It’s a familiar sight at Los Angeles Kings hockey games to see Holland on the edge of the ice poking his camera lens through a hole in a barrier to get a closer, more dramatic shot of the players. In 1989, he was named “Official Sports Artist of the Kings.” The team’s private offices at the Staples Center look like a one-man gallery of Holland’s art.

Holland has painted the greats from almost every sport. When he begins his research for a painting, he searches through hundreds of sports images for a photo that captures the subject’s unique skill. On preparing to paint baseball great Jackie Robinson, Holland was looking for several things. “One, the feeling he was sliding. I chose a photo for me that really showed the action. It was interesting from the athlete’s point of view, that was very important. I remember moving the hat more backward and tilting the photo I looked at so it just was more exciting visually.” Holland translates his composite images onto canvas, isolating the player’s defining gestures, action, and triumphal moment. Athletes are at the top of the list of Holland’s greatest fans. Former Dodger outfielder, “Sweet” Lou Johnson said when he saw the Robinson print:“I’ve seen a lot of paintings of Jackie. This one struck me because of the facial expressions of Jackie – the intensity to win.”

Holland finds the determination and hard work required for an athlete to be a winner a deep inspiration. He directs the same level of discipline and devotion into his art. Holland’s palette is often black and white or black and white with a few small areas of light tints. This high contrast palette suits his gritty subject matter. He employs a variety of media from acrylics and spray paint to pencil and crayon. He’s even known to use mud mixed in paints. The background is a loose wash with the detail reserved for the figure and the action. When Holland uses a palette of bright colored paints, he achieves the same intensity of contrast. Holland cites Rembrandt’s shadowy painting, “Night Watch,” as a major influence on his style. In the mid-’90s, Holland began experimenting with color, first as tints within the black and white pieces, and then as bright, mixed media backgrounds that evoked the loud, high energy, multi-ring circus that professional sports had become.

“It’s not so much about the rendering but about the form, shapes and colors. That’s what makes it rich and delicious for me.”
Stephen Holland, Artifacts Gallery Bios

In painting, a precursor of Holland’s style is the depiction of boxing by George Bellows in the 1900s. Earlier paintings by English masters such as George Stubbs in the 1700s and the French Impressionists such as Renoir and Sisley in the 1800s portrayed sports as the elegant occupation of the aristocracy. Games unfolded on manicured fields at exclusive clubs where a gentleman sportsman could round out his classical education with physical fitness. In America, the democratization of sports led to portrayals of the rougher, savage aspect of sports among all classes and a newfound reverence for the toughness of the working class. Technical advances in the 1900s in photography that allowed a viewer to stop a film frame to examine a position of a split second gave Holland the ability to select more dramatic moments of action. The black and white palette of news photography that dominates many of Holland’s works conveys an appropriate mood of raw realism.

By the beginning of the 1900s, America’s motto was “faster, higher, stronger, bigger. This fixation on achievement led inevitably to the ‘sportification’ (‘Versportung’) of culture and society. Just as inevitably, the rage for sports left its mark on American painting, drawing, photography and cartooning.”

A wood panel is Holland’s preferred canvas. On this he swirls layers of gesso, then house paint for texture, then rough sketches of figures. Along with paper images and stencils, swashes of spray paint and watery acrylics are applied to create his signature backgrounds that often drip off the edges carrying the action out from the canvas. Built along with his basic black forms and white highlights, the loose color layers of his painterly style intensify the work’s emotional impact.

Holland’s tough heroes are freeze-framed in his paintings at the height of performing their characteristic moves, “faster, higher, stronger, bigger.” Holland may not have begun his life as a sportsman, but he has gained the spirit of a great athlete from his intense identification with the skills of sports greats. Now living in California, Holland has become the tough guy of sports painting with his accurate, powerful portrayals of their action during peak moments.

“I wasn’t interested in sports until I started working at it as an artist…As a kid, you play basketball and imagine you’re Michael Jordan. That’s what I feel like when I’m starting to look for photos of athletes, trying to pick something out. For me, you’re the athlete. You’re sitting on your bed with a football thinking, ‘Montana goes back to pass…’ I didn’t have that feeling as a kid. I do now.”
Stephen Holland, Dodgers Magazine, 50th Anniversary, 2008

Stephen Holland – “Sports Heights in High Contrast” – 1993 Sport Artist of the  Year

“Walk into a room with one of (Holland’s) portraits and you are committed to observe. Each time in the silence you see more. Enjoy more. You share the emotional impact.” ~ Robert Riger, Award-winning sports artist

1989

Commission for 13 Los Angeles Kings hockey team paintings

1991

“Official Artist for the Victor Awards,” Silver Anniversary, Las Vegas

1993

“Sport Artist of the Year,” American Sport Art Museum and Archives

1996

“Official Artist of the 100th Anniversary of the Olympics”

1997

Signs with Sports Placement Services/SPS Art talent agency

1998

Limited Editions: Sandy Koufax, Joe Namath, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson

1999

“Muhammad Ali” portrait: Commissioned for the Silver Anniversary of the Victor Awards honoring Ali as “Athlete of the Century.” Ali’s wife selected the painting to represent him for his 50th birthday party. ASAMA’s lithograph of this painting is signed by Ali.

2000

Commission for series of paintings of ice hockey’s Wayne Gretzky

2004

Major League Baseball All Star Game program cover artist

2006

Painting: Baseball Hall of Famer, Pirate, “Roberto Clemente”

2007

Portrait of L.A. Kings’ Luc Robitaille

2008

“Artist of the Dodgers’ 50th Los Angeles Anniversary”
Official Artist of the Grammys

2009

Commission for 10 paintings commemorating Stanley Cup alumni

2010

“Official Artist,” Major League Baseball All Star Game & Fan Fest