Who is Peter Holden?
Peter Holden is a Painter and Artist. He was born in Los Angeles, CA and lives full-time in San Miguel de Allende and visits Todos Santos, BCS and the States often.
Peter has a history and lineage in art. He grew up loving sports and music and having great, supportive family and friends. While painting was always present – his grandmother was a Laguna landscapist and one of his two older brothers was an accomplished artist – his focus was really on guitar and music. When he got to college at UCSB he started playing music with visual artists, and took a liking to painting. He began to take classes in Art History in college. After a 6 month European “grand tour” which featured all of the major museums in any one city or country, art began to loom larger in his life.
Images of the San Miguel studios, summer 2022
Why do I love Peter Holden’s work?
“There may be no other artist I know, where process is truly everything. Peter loves to paint for the mere act of painting and he will paint on any surface he can get his hands on. He can have multiple pieces going in his studio at once, from very large works to little gems, and each piece goes through an evolution of gestural drawing & painting, compositional changes, color editing, tightening and loosening of line and stroke, each canvas is an experiment of expressive color, form, texture and what I like to call “drippiness.” He is constantly studying and looking at art from the masters of the past to today’s up and coming artists and everyone in between, drawing inspiration and knowledge from all of them. A painting can change drastically from day to day until he deems it finished. There is nothing shy or timid about his work. Peter had a long career as an executive in the music industry in LA and in Europe, but always painted on the side until he decided to change gears, attending UC Santa Barbara, the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze in Italy and completing an MFA in Studio Art from CSU, Los Angeles. I have had the pleasure working with Peter on many commissions including 7 large pieces for the new Chileno Bay Resort and Residences and it was such fun to watch the works evolve, from sketches from his photos of the local landscape to the final drippy, expressive, “fabulousness”, that is his work. And on top of this raw talent, he is also super fun to hang out with!”