Richard Holland

Demo: 6th October 2026

Subject: "Derbyshire Dales” in Watercolour

Website: www.richardhollandlandscapeartist.co.uk

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Profile:

Richard has had an interest in art since primary school, and probably inherited this from his father’s artistic talents. Although missing out getting into Art College from school, he started painting watercolours avidly in his early twenty’s. He eventually started exhibiting and selling a few of his watercolours at a gallery called Gallery 13 in the village of Epworth in Lincolnshire.

In 1999, He started an A level Art Course at Patching Art Centre under the instruction of Liz Wood. On achieving His A level in 2001, Liz persuaded him to join her Painting with Oils Group and she has given him constant support throughout ever since. With attended her classes for many years. he gained the confidence to work with oil paints, Liz Wood give him the opportunity to exhibit and demonstrate his oils on his own stand at the Patching Festival to which he’s done for many years. This give him many openings in other areas such as writing articles for the Leisure Painter and getting chance to have a painting critiques from a painting hero of his for many years, David Curtis.

In 2010 he took a leap of faith and became a professional artist after being made redundant from his teaching role at West Nottinghamshire Collage of F.E to which he had worked for the last 10 years. He had also been given the chance to do a few community classes in painting whilst still working for the collage and this would be the bases of his first classes as a professional artist.  Richard runs six classes a week, three in oils and three in watercolours, he has ran these classes for the last 14 years with many of his original students still attending the classes. He also travels around the country giving demonstrations and workshops to art groups and Societies.  

Most of his paintings during the last 15 years have been created using pen and wash sketches or oil sketches with the occasional photograph to back these up. This then allows him to create studio works and group or class demos from first hand source material.

His own personal painting style for many of his paintings is impressionistic using loose free flowing brush marks, mark making and the vibrancy of colour although he can feel just at home being detailed too. He’s style has been picked up from his initial classes with Liz Wood, but more so the influences of the group of influential artist he paints with regularly, as well as fellow RBSA member and great friend Carol Hills influences. 

He enjoys painting a wide range subject’s mainly in oil but also in watercolours too, oil being his chosen preferred medium. He has had to be prepared to do many different styles and subject matters within these classes he runs. This has given him a good cross section of ideas he can work with other than his landscapes.  With living in the Derbyshire dales he has no shortage of landscape ideas he can work with, but over lockdown he very much got into painting still life a subject which he enjoys just as much as landscape.