Born in Zimbabwe in 1953 I grew up there with my sister Dinah. Our parents, Elspeth and Hardwicke Holderness, were part of a number of dedicated people trying tirelessly to persuade the minority white electorate to share power: to enfranchise, within the constitution, the majority black population. The whites were not persuaded, instead choosing an ignorant divide-and-rule government, leading inevitably in 1966 to a brutalising and avoidable war, lasting 14 years.
Our father's book "Lost Chance" describes the efforts made to prevent this.
Being white, we were privileged to have a brilliant, free, Government School education. Had we been black, we'd have been lucky to get any, and luckier for it to have been free. In 1968 Dinah came to England to study medicine, and I followed in 1972 to study painting, first at Bristol and then at Central School of Art & Design in London. We later both married and had families here. I live in Gloucestershire with my two children, two cats, and a dog.
Once upon a time I meant to be a sculptor in stone, but have spent most of my life drawing with dust on paper - the most fleeting of things! (When everything is turned back into the soil 15 miles down and only star-song left, my pictures will have been long long gone. I love that).
I love pastels. Perhaps because they are what the first people drew with on the rocks : mud and blood and charcoal. They are dust of the purest pigments, held together with a little glue. They are matt, absorbing whatever light they are in and changing with it. And they are immediate. I work using layers of colours, sometimes over a wash of red gouache or acrylic, wearing away fingerprints, and mostly I use the soft, smooth Rowney pastels, the harder but also smooth subtle colours of Rembrandt and the vibrant colours of Sennelier.
Our father's book "Lost Chance" describes the efforts made to prevent this.
Being white, we were privileged to have a brilliant, free, Government School education. Had we been black, we'd have been lucky to get any, and luckier for it to have been free. In 1968 Dinah came to England to study medicine, and I followed in 1972 to study painting, first at Bristol and then at Central School of Art & Design in London. We later both married and had families here. I live in Gloucestershire with my two children, two cats, and a dog.
Once upon a time I meant to be a sculptor in stone, but have spent most of my life drawing with dust on paper - the most fleeting of things! (When everything is turned back into the soil 15 miles down and only star-song left, my pictures will have been long long gone. I love that).
I love pastels. Perhaps because they are what the first people drew with on the rocks : mud and blood and charcoal. They are dust of the purest pigments, held together with a little glue. They are matt, absorbing whatever light they are in and changing with it. And they are immediate. I work using layers of colours, sometimes over a wash of red gouache or acrylic, wearing away fingerprints, and mostly I use the soft, smooth Rowney pastels, the harder but also smooth subtle colours of Rembrandt and the vibrant colours of Sennelier.