Laurel Holmes

Laurel Holmes is a Western Cape-based painter and printmaker whose work is inspired by the landscapes and natural environments of South Africa.After a successful career in the corporate sector, she made the decision to pursue art full-time, relocating from Johannesburg to the Cape where she established her studio practice. Since then, she has developed a body of work spanning painting, printmaking and mixed media, drawing particular inspiration from the coastlines, mountains and waterways of the Western Cape.Holmes completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art with distinction at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, in 2021. Her work has been exhibited widely and is held in numerous private, corporate and public collections, including the Spier Arts Trust and the University of Cape Town Works of Art Collection.

Today, she continues to explore themes of landscape, memory and our connection to the natural world through a practice that is both thoughtful and deeply rooted in observation.

'Light from Dark: printmakers in conversation with Alma Vorster'
'She' - group exhibition at Riebeek Kasteel Contemporary
Turbine Art Fair with White River Gallery, Johannesburg
joined The Printing Girls by invitation and exhibited (The Artroom Parkhurst)

2019
'Surface and Depth' -  exhibitition at Gallery 2, with Danielle Malherbe, Johannesburg
'nano 1.3' - group exhibition at Barnard Gallery, Cape Town
Turbine Art Fair with Gallery 2 and White River Gallery, Johannesburg
'Don’t drink the milk' - exhibition at No End Gallery, Johanneburg
'Land & Sea' -group exhibition at Art on Avenues, Somerset West
‘Say Africa’ (White River Gallery)
Initiator of Kommetjie Open Studios event.

2018
The White River Gallery re-launch exhibition;
Innibos: ‘Mosterd na de Maal’
Turbine Art Fair (Gallery 2, Halifax Art)
nano 1.2 (Barnard Gallery)
As it was: group exhibition at White River Gallery, Mpumalanga
Contributed to GIF4 (The Artists’ Press)(copies of GIF purchased by the Smithsonian and the V&A Museum).

2017
Group exhibitions included ‘Disclosure’ and the SA Fine Art Print Fair (Halifax Art)
‘Earth Garden’ and Turbine Art Fair (Gallery 2) and other group exhibitions with Carol Lee Fine Art, In Toto Gallery, Liebrecht Gallery and State of the Art.

2016
Turbine Art Fair (Gallery 2)
‘Surface matters’ (Halifax Art)
‘Scapes’ (State of the Art) and Liebrecht Gallery.

2011-2015
Various group exhibitions at In Toto Gallery, Halifax Art, Rotary Art Festival, the inaugural SA Fine Art Print Fair.

Which new trends or South African artists do you find inspiring at the moment?
The use of digital techniques being incorporated into printworks – for example, Emma Willemse. And always Karin Daymond’s paintings. There’s a ‘pull’ to stand in front of them - even when the painting is physically small, you’re still looking at a large landscape. And I find Peter Eastman’s dark paintings intriguing.
 
Which South African deceased artist do you most admire and why?
Esrom Legae – the sensitivity of line in his drawing and print work, and strength of the images are beautiful. Working in a socio-political environment when it must have been extremely difficult.  
If you could only have one piece of art in your life, what would it be?
Frans Oerder’s ‘Magnolias’.

How did you get started? Did you always want to be an artist?
As children, my mom encouraged my sisters and I to be creative – bake, draw, paint, explore a range of crafts.  When I went to university, I wanted to study Fine Art but not having taken art as a subject at school, I didn’t have the confidence to study it so ended up doing a BCom instead. While working, I started Fine Art through Unisa (but couldn’t finish) and took drawing and painting classes from time to time. I left the corporate environment in 2012 to work as a full time artist, and recently relocated from Johannesburg to Cape Town. I have had painting training with two remarkable artists themselves, Karin Daymond and Ricky Burnett.

What are some of the key themes you explore in your work?
The loss of a visual aesthetic through environmental degradation and the lack of stewardship of our natural resources and natural environs, as well as the impact of this loss of natural areas on the human psyche.

What should people know about your art that they can’t tell from looking at it?
That my remarkable father, who is in his 90s, until recently was precision-making my canvas stretchers.

Tell us more about your creative process.
There’s no fixed process but usually on visiting a new place and spending some time in a new natural environment, there are new references that relate to something I have been thinking that I work on immediately I return to my studio. Other times, there are ideas that I’ve had but their time is not yet and so they percolate for a period, even years, before permeating into a medium and physical works result. When the time happens, all I want to do is work with this and I experiment, particularly in print, to get to an outcome.   

What drives you as an artist?
I think as with most visual artists, it’s to express oneself in one’s chosen media. A curiosity to see if I can make something beautiful of the reference I am using yet still manage to convey a message through the works.  

Do you have a favourite or most meaningful work?
Hard to choose one work as there are many that I have been sad to part with to new homes. However, there is a landscape painting that my parents bought that I am very attached to.

What is your greatest achievement as an artist to date
Someone wanted to buy one of my paintings and when I advised that it had already sold,  responded to say that it was fine -  the painting had done its job. She said it evoked a very emotional response (read a seriously good cry), which was worth hours of therapy.

What are your aspirations for the future?
To make bigger work and to move towards making more abstract work.

Pick three artists you would love to exhibit with. Why?
Karin Daymond –  challenges me!
Natasha Norman Moodley – sets the example of (beautiful) ‘abstract’ water environments
Elize Vossgatter – the scale of her paintings is remarkable and would also test my ability to produce work that could hold up

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