John Holcomb is a self-taught artist from Kansas.
BIO
John Holcomb uses oil pastels to draw bold line work on top of acrylic paint to modernize subjects as diverse as figures, florals and the frontier. He works from his studio based in Kansas. When he’s not painting he’s playing or recording guitars, watching foreign films or listening to skate punk.
Holcomb has been represented by Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery LDN/MIA/NYC since 2016.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I’m a contemporary painter examining how pictures script identity. Mining the generic vernacular of stock imagery, I reframe the familiar visual canon of Western symbols through thin layers of paint and purposeful, hand-drawn line.
In Chroma Cowboys I recast the West’s masculine archetypes in vivid, feminine colorways that shift their authority. With Mod Muses I re-stage inherited poses of women, using color to modulate a passive participant into an active presence.
Across my repertoire, rogue colors, an economy of mark, and imperfect line detach images from their expected roles, opening space for new ways of seeing the world we’ve inherited.
