Robin Holder’s work has been featured in one person exhibitions at the Mobile Museum of Art, Alabama and The Spelman College Museum and in 2014  her series OUTSOURCED! was installed at the American Labor Museum. A comprehensive exhibition, Robin Holder: A Layered Perspective, was presented by the The North Carolina Central University Art Museum.

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Her retrospective Robin Holder: An American Consciousness, was produced by and featured at the  The David Driskell Center at UMD, Maryland.  The exhibit catalogue, with color reproductions, academic,historic and curatorial essays is on line at: http://www.driskellcenter.umd.edu/Holder/index.php

Creative Motivation

My work is physically layered and mirrors the fact that my identity is composed of distinct and seemingly incompatible elements. The imagery I create is an expression of the internal infrastructure, a spiritual armature I have developed as a resource for dealing with the complexities of my life.

Technique

I am primarily concerned with movement, spatial relationships, color and gesture. My works on paper, unlike my large scale public art work, are intimate and very personal. As a printmaker I use an improvisational approach that can be organically combined with other media: painting, drawing and collage.

Most of my work is made by printing in layers on archival paper. In most cases each image is unique. The images are achieved by printing an arrangement of inked stencil forms on an etching press. Some prints have 30-40 layers of hand printing. I often create textural effects on the inked surface of the plate by using brushes and other materials that leave patterns or markings in the ink. I have used some of my stencils so many times so that many shapes have become my visual alphabet. These stencils are characters that I assemble and reconfigure in various visual environments. At times I include photo silk-screen, photo lithograph, collagraph, Xerox transfer and digitally created elements. Since I print in layers, with transparent colors and opaque inks, parts of the image recede and others move forward.