Donald Holden
Watercolor by Donald Holden from 2001
Don fell in love with art, age 3, when he and his Dad drew “horsies”
and wagons, on shirt card boards. He continued drawing and paint-
ing through his years at Columbia. Working at The Met for 2 years
as PR director, he was fascinated by the subtleties of Asian painting
for the first time. Later, for Watson Guptill Publications, he wrote
more than 12 art instruction books as author Wendon Blake, and
books on art careers and Whistler.
Retiring from publishing in the mid-80’s, Don turned his full attention to painting watercolors. Many articles detail his unusual techniques in his 600 plus paintings and in a book Donald Holden Watercolors, published in 2004, now out of print. More than 40 museum collections hold his work, including The Met, National Gallery, and British Museum. Don died peacefully April 25th, 2017, at 86.
Statement: I like to do small paintings because they become meditative objects,like a Japanese tea bowl that you hold in your hands so you can look inside, I like to think that my watercolors are small, quiet worlds that invite you to step inside and lose yourself. The painting doesn’t happen on the paper or the canvas; it happens in the viewer’s mind. My job is to give the viewer a highly distilled image that makes him or her see more than actually appears on the paper.”
128 Deertrack Lane, Irvington, NY