TORSO GALLERY
DAVID J. HOLLAND
A B O U T T H I S W O R K
When transposing sculptures into a two dimensional work on paper, I use contrasting colors from opposite sides of the color wheel, to create an extreme three dimensional appearance. I like mixing up the idea that shadows are best represented by cool colors and lighted parts of a piece are best represented by warm colors.
TORSO GALLERY
DAVID J. HOLLAND
THE TORSO SERIES
In art museums in Italy and France and sometimes in the United States I happen upon Roman Marble sculptures of magnificently detailed renderings of the human body. I am always struck by the ones that have been altered for all time by the violence of an individual who for what ever reason felt that they had to destroy these works of art. The stark contrast between the sumptuous smooth skin and the craggly cracked off sections seem like a perfect metaphor to
me for currents running through our own time. They represent how beauty and brutality can often clash within supposedly civilized societies.
When transposing these sculptures into a two dimensional work on paper, I use contrasting colors from opposite sides of the color wheel, to create an extreme three dimensional appearance. I like mixing up the idea that shadows are best represented by cool colors and lighted parts of a piece are best represented by warm colors. Green, red contrasts work well for this purpose because green can represent something alive and growing and red can represent the fires of Rome as it was sacked and burned. The artists who created these sculptures breathed life into these works. They began lives of their own when completed and I still see them as living things even though they now exist as broken beings.
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