MEET OUR WRITERS
M E L V I L L E H O L M E S
Melville Holmes( b. 1950, San Francisco) describes himself as a“ progressive traditionalist.” Best known for his color and design work on the renovation of the Davenport Hotel( 2000-2002), the choice of Holmes to oversee the hotel’ s decor was serendipitous. The renovation required a decor consultant with historic sensibilities and the skills to work with modern tradesmen to infuse the Davenport’ s signature appeal with new life.
While he was still an art major in 1972, an experience in the Rembrandt Room at the museum inspired him to recover Old Master techniques as a living, generative language of expression. He later described that encounter:
“ I saw a rich matrix of paint applied with consummate technical understanding, within which was an image of such existential human nobility that it seemed to transcend the artist’ s age and mine. It was a kind of epiphany, proof of quintessential artistic virtue, demonstrating that it is possible for a painted image to reach across the centuries to touch one’ s essential humanity. To accomplish something of this in my own generation, even if only in a small way, became my goal.”
During the 20th century, however, the prevailing attitude in the art world considered traditional art obsolete.“ Not for our time,” was the mantra. Holmes was not trying to exhume a fashion that had exhausted itself, though, but craftsmanship and sensibilities he saw as timeless. But by the end of the 18th century artists didn’ t know how the Old Masters painted because they had not been trained in the same way. Advice in artist’ s manuals largely speculated on how they achieved their fluid textural and luminous effects.
Since there was nothing for it but to teach himself, Holmes would take two extensive trips to Europe to study masterworks first hand. He developed a technique using many layers of transparent and opaque colors, but in the mid‘ 80s faced a crisis. His trusted Copal painting medium was discontinued and nothing was working. It was at this juncture that he embarked on an exhaustive study of the historical, technical, and scientific literature on painting materials, and much correspondence with conservators and scientists who worked on and studied the paintings that inspired him. He acquired Congo copal resin and laboratory equipment to formulate his own oil / varnish media and began making paint from scratch. In 1999 his research paper,“ Amber Varnish and the Techniques of the Gentileschi,” was published as an appendix to Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art; Critical Reading and Catalogue Raisonné by R. Ward Bissell, establishing Holmes as an authority on the topic of natural resin varnishes in historical paint media.
In 1998, Seattle’ s Frye Art Museum exhibited his work in the one-man show,“ Old Master Dialogues.” His subjects typically include still life, figures, landscape, and architectural pieces
Though primarily a fine artist, Holmes has lent his hand to such varied decorative and restoration projects as designing the back bar at the Post Street Alehouse, repairing the ornamental terracotta on Spokane’ s Great Western building, statuary repair for St. Aloysius Parish, and creating unique decorative interior and exterior finishes for the Riverview Corporate Center. Other interests include urban beautification, historic preservation, interior decor, the history of costume, classical music, and boating.
January | February 2017 29