All the paintings in this section are oil on canvas except where noted.
Please email for detailed images and descriptions.
Paintings 2006-2008
“Mike Holsomback’s work is rich with imagery…imagery laid out in space, imagery stacked up in planes, imagery woven into or pasted upon other imagery and all of it laid in with gusto, with passion, with heart. To contemplate Mr. Holsomback’s work is to find oneself emerged in the world we live in – a world familiar and real – a world of cornfields and shanties, of lawn-chairs and swimming pools, of high heels and patterned cloth, a world of men, children and dogs of every sort. And over and over, somewhere within his large canvases there stands the fragilely scaled but strong and solitary female. This is a world that, in another’s hands, might come off mundane but handed to us by Mike, slides into our souls. It lets us know that life is simple, that the simple is profound.”
“From canvas to canvas Holsomback’s hues vary between the clean and sunlit effects of sky blues, bright reds or jumpy light/dark contrast to the deep and heady – Prussian blues, viridian greens, steamy, smoky golden’s… which pool onto sky and ground, which seep into the dark lines that Van Gogh-like etched out figures before they are ‘sculpted’ in. Thus the keen mastery of Mike’s tone and color goes nearly baroque, but the speed of his handling of paint and its markings, its edginess, its drips and runs – clearly mark his style as expressionistic – neo-expressionistic in consciousness and thus, innately, post-modern.”
“Yet…something new may be afoot…For several years now a Salle-like fracturing has spun the homey imagery of the quietly intense Holsomback. His endless southern spaces have given way to chopped arrangements. Yet sculpted and expressive, his forms are now often compressed, restrained within a set of boxes, gridded or shuffled before us like the backs of playing cards still holding a convincing fictive dream. Before us a world, our world, like candies, hitting us now in pieces.”
Denise Frank Heinly
Professor of Art History / Chattanooga State Community College 2006
Paintings 2001-2005
In these new representative, figurative oil paintings, I use a painterly style of dramatic color patches to construct complex surfaces and even more complex and often mysterious narratives. Through introspection and observation, I am searching for meaning and significance within my own shifting southern culture. I examine past and present social boundaries and southern stereotypes, and compile the personalities, situations and scenery that I find, into these self-conscious dramas. Mood, memories and moments engage the viewer in dramas, which are both familiar and unsettling. The innocence of contemporary suburban pleasure is contrasted by an ominous rural southern past and an uncertain future. With an eye for surface and image, banality and beauty, I seek an understanding of the conflicted culture that I often find. In this world of flux, the only constant is the vigilant family dog. This ever-present dog sniffs out the self-absorbed passions, guilt and obsessions, which appear to drive each individual and define our culture. Is the dog an indifferent participant, or is he some symbolic anthropomorphic role player in this conflicted human drama? Or, perhaps he is even some ancient shaman sent to reveal truths unknown.
Mike Holsomback
mholsomback@msn.com
423.580.1659