Andrew Holmes

Andrew Holmes’ work investigates industrial landscapes at the urban periphery. In hyper-realistic colored pencil drawings, Holmes builds his tense images with a fine eye to the depiction of surface characteristics such as oxidation, wood grain, and highly reflective surfaces that mirror and distort their surroundings. The rigour of Holmes’ renderings in combination with dramatic formal composition creates effects of alienation and animation.

In recent years, Holmes has also turned to photography. His night photographs explore mysterious low-contrast  textures in landscapes at sites in Europe and the U.S..

Andrew Holmes is a Professor of Architecture at Oxford’s Brookes University, Guest Professor at the TU Berlin, and a Visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. He currently lives and works in London.

Holmes’ drawings are knockouts: virtuoso displays of keen observations. In many, light dances off polished metal, catching reflections of the visible world in the curved surfaces of tankers, pickups and custom-painted cars. Even junked vehicles look beautiful in Holmes’ super-realistic pictures, which treat ordinarily overlooked details as occasions for extraordinary attentiveness. — David Pagel, Los Angeles Times