curtisartist
Curtis Holder is a London-based artist recognised for large-scale works on paper in graphite and coloured pencil. Grounded in intimate dialogue with sitters, Holder combines conversation and drawing to explore identity, emotion, and human connection. The practice focuses on individuals whose experiences exist beyond dominant cultural narratives, including Black and Brown communities, Queer identities, and others whose stories are often overlooked. Holder’s multilayered drawings, marked by dynamic, fluid lines, convey form, movement, and emotional depth. Recently, Holder has developed an experimental approach to durational portraiture. Working with sitters over extended periods, Holder employs sustained dialogue, repeated observation, and intuitive mark-making to examine drawing as co-creation. The outcomes of this process range from exploratory drawings and series of multilayered portraits to large collaborative works that can extend to room-length in scale. These works capture not only physical form and movement but also the evolving emotional and psychological dimensions of his subjects.
Artwork Introduction
Dance of Eshu is a panoramic drawing created through Curtis Holder’s durational portraiture process with DMAC, a dancer and creative. Over several months of sustained conversation, repeated observation and intuitive mark-making, Holder and DMAC developed a co-creative practice tracing both physical presence and evolving emotional and psychological dimensions of identity. The drawing depicts a choreography created by DMAC in which he captures dialogue with Holder. Over the course of a day, they navigated a wave of creative conversation and movement, with DMAC performing and Holder repeatedly drawing in real time. The work translates the interplay of presence, rhythm and expression into a layered visual form, expressing aspects of DMAC’s selfhood carried since childhood, including navigating colourism, masculinity and the urge to suppress femininity.
The drawing results from this sustained, collaborative process, translating the energy, vulnerability and flow of performance into an expansive, layered portrait.
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