Riley Holloway is best known for his dynamic practice with text and image, his perspective of wandering thoughts, fears, and struggle, and for speaking his mind with traditional drawing and oil painting techniques on canvas. Riley Holloway’s portraits have the canny sense of representing us and not-us. He began to see the importance in life of taking emotional experiences and situations, oftentimes difficult, repurposing them to process and speak with figurative painting. The images are an engaging mixture of observation, tranquility, rage, motion, and stillness, a distillation of the artist’s contradictions in seeing the world, in the observation of the Afro-American landscape of today.
"My work begins with the individual. I‘ve always been an observer of people and run into individuals who inspire me through their personality, fashion, or conversation. I aim for creating pieces that are rich in storytelling, free from constraints, and true to the person I‘m painting. This is accomplished by letting the individual‘s narrative drive my work. I use traditional drawing and oil painting techniques to articulate the qualities of each individual." - Riley Holloway, 2021.
