About Robert Holmes

Robert was instinctively talented as a boy of 16 in designing and helping build two homes in Arizona, where he grew up. He completed a degree in Civil Engineering, rather than architecture due to the lack of a program at that time, from the University of Arizona in 1952. Robert moved to Northern California where he started the Robert Holmes Construction, Design, Development Company. He spent his spare time sculpting his semiabstract figures. Holmes designed two of his warm contemporary homes in Atherton, California and seven luxury homes on 2 acre sites in Portola Valley in the Westridge area. In 1958 Robert moved his business to Phoenix Arizona. He continued designing and building custom luxury homes, four of Holmes's designs were featured in the Phoenix Republic and Gazette newspaper and several in Sunset Magazine. Robert was a master builder and designer, building: three large churches in the Sun City area, apartment complexes with over 480 units, banks, and the Metropolitan Life building in Phoenix until the early eighties. Robert sold his contracting business, in 1981, and decided to pursue his sculpting passion exclusively. He moved to The Sea Ranch, California started casting his work through the encouragement of the Los Angeles gallery owner and world-renowned art critic, Charles Feingarden, who was responsible for bringing Rodin sculpture to the United States. In 1989 Robert established and still maintains his own bronze-casting foundry in Sebastopol, California.

The focus of integrating Holmes's bronze sculpture and the design of the home shown herein, exhibit his naturally inspired genius. The home was completed in 2003. It is a renaissance of Robert's early architectural designs infused with his internationally acclaimed fine art. Holmes and his team are available for consultation in art selection, architectural design detail, second opinion on architectural design features, and at times may offer special exclusive commissioned sculpture that is integrated with architectural design.

The Art

Bronze sculpture for the new millennium cast from the mold of optimism.

Robert Holmes has been exhibiting sculptures over the past twenty-five years in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Holmes' work is represented in galleries throughout the States. The artist has had numerous one-man, group, and invitational shows. Many private and corporate collectors worldwide own and enjoy his art.

Reviews

"Robert Holmes, although self taught, is intuitively dead center of the development of modern sculpture The restless, thrusting energy of Rodin, the abstraction of Brancusi, the expressionism of Lachaise, the symbolic power of Moore, are all echoed in his work."

-- Richard Warren, Art Historian- Princeton University, Stanford University, San Francisco State University, Curator of the Gualala Arts Center's "Robert Holmes Retrospective 1941-1998"

The artist obtained a Civil Engineering degree and architectural training from the University of Arizona. Because of these skills, Holmes has the technical expertise to interface easily with designers and architects. Both disciplines are evident in the structural elements of his technical prowess.

"The grace and serenity of his human abstractions attest to a master's command of his medium and a sublime artistic sensibility. Robert Holmes' all too rare achievement is that of distilling the human form to its essential elements and capturing, within those essentials, postures of truly poetic feeling."

-- Review by David Betz, Assistant Director, Vorpal Gallery Soho, New York.

Uplifting emotions are a central theme in the work and as Holmes says, there is, "No politics, no horror, no shock, no ugliness. There's enough of that in the world!" Through the human form, Holmes conveys a Zen like serenity, grace, optimism, and strength. In alignment with this focus, UBS Warburg Bank in London and Paine Webber has recently acquired Holmes's "The Dancers" as the public face on their brochures. They feel this sculpture, which is installed in the UBS Bank in London, is a symbol of their new merger, "the art of the possible."

The artist has his foundry, Bronze + Inc. in Sebastopol, California, fifty miles north of San Francisco and his residence and studio at The Sea Ranch, which is further north on the California coast. Holmes feels he has control of the quality and precision of the casting process by owning a foundry. There, he creates semiabstract cast bronze figures in limited editions of 3 to 12, which range from table-size to larger-than-life. Holmes has this to say about his work: "My work is my statement. I don't believe that words go very far in describing sculpture. I would rather let people see my work itself and interact with it in their own way."

Jayne McGuire, in her review of Holmes' work for the August 2000 edition of Décor and Style Magazine, states:

"Holmes' contemporary figurative work, especially his life giving female figure, expresses a nurturing, universal quality which celebrates the joy of being, the joy of movement, and our basic human need for 'connectedness'. A consistent vitality is present in all of Holmes' figures, evident in the graceful movement of his dancers and runners, and in the solitary stillness of his reclining and seated figures."