Joseph Holston

Joseph Holston’s cubist abstractionist style has evolved over a fine arts career spanning nearly 40 years. Holston grew up in the historic African American community of Hawkins Lane, in Chevy Chase, Maryland. In his teens he moved with his family to Washington, D. C. He worked for eight years in advertising and commercial art, while studying and developing his skills as a painter. In 1971, after summer study in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Holston left the field of commercial art to become a full-time studio artist. He works and creates from his studio in Takoma Park, Maryland.

While Holston’s paintings are colorful and painterly, his etchings are more about line, pattern and texture. His cycle of paintings and etchings titled Color in Freedom: Journey along the Underground Railroad, has been touring since 2008, and was most recently exhibited at the Palais des Nations of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. He is a critically acclaimed artist who has exhibited at numerous institutions, including the Amarillo Museum of Art, Texas; the Washington County Museum of Fine Art, Maryland; the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; the Butler Institute of American Art, Ohio; the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American History and Culture, Baltimore; the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum; the Fort Worth Museum of Fine Art, Texas; and the African-American Museum of Philadelphia.

Works by Joseph Holston are included in many public and private collections. Among these are the permanent collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Yale University Art Gallery; the Butler Institute of American Art; the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design; the Amarillo Museum of Art, Texas; the Washington County Museum of Fine Art, Maryland; the Lyndon B. Johnson Library at the University of Texas; Howard University; the University of Maryland University College; the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland; the National Medical Association; and New York’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

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