Charles Holder, 32-year-old newcomber to Lakeland, Florida, is a talented artist with many national awards to his credit, yet he doesn’t fit the popular conception of an artist, he doesn’t even resemble one.
The talented young man prefers “Chuck” to “Mr. Holder”. He doesn’t smoke a pipe, won’t wear a beard or a beret, and drives a dark-green sedan rather than a rakish foreign car. His pretty red-haired wife, Joan, says that he only has a trace of the artistic temperament which allegedly makes talented persons difficult to live with.
Paintings by Mr. Holder will be featured in an open house art exhibit set tomorrow at 8:00 p.m. by the Lakeland Art Guild in it’s new studios at Lodwick Field. The public has been invited to attend the open house which will be preceded by a covered dish supper for Guild members and their families. Mr. Holder, his wife, and their two sons live at 802 Orange Park and plan to make Lakeland their new home.
WIFE WAS FSC CO-ED
A former Southern College co-ed, Mrs. Holder explained that her husband’s artistic temperament manifests itself only when he is bogged down with other details and cannot work on his paintings. “When he feels that way,” she smiled at her husband, “there’s no need to ask what’s wrong, you can see it written on his face.”
Danny, 5, and Mike, 3 1/2, the Holder’s sons, are the rough-and-tumble youngsters with soulful eyes and sandy hair. In a hospitable mood, the two boys acted as hosts, offering the reporter and the photographer sweets they personally selected from the refrigerator and transported to the living room.
Asked if the boys showed any artistic inclination, the Holders said that both youngsters draw recognizable figures and added that Danny seems to be very adept with modeling clay.
NATIVE FLORIDIAN
Chuck Holder is a native Floridian. He was born in Miami, raised in Alachua, and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Florida in Gainesville. The artist has taught painting technique in Miami, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota and is now conducting four classes weekly for the Lakeland Art Guild.
Oil is his medium and portraits, figures, and still-life works are his preferences . He prefers doing portraits and paints from life, if at all possible, rather than using photographs as many other portrait artists do.
A moody study entitled “PORTRAIT OF RACHEL” is his favorite work. “Rachel was a textile painter that worked at night,” explained the artist. “I like it because I feel it captured her character and the mood I chose to indicate,” he said.
“Portrait of Rachel” has only been exhibited once. It was included in a Coral Gables’ art week display and won first place honors. The painting will be among Mr. Holder’s works to be shown at the Art Guild open house. A portrait study of his wife will also be included.
HOW THEY MET
Chuck and Joan Holder met during his senior year at the University of Florida. An accomplished artist in her own right and a student at the University, she visited Chuck’s one-man-show on campus. Impressed with his work, Joan remarked that she’d like to meet the artist.
The friends, a young married couple who had a photography studio, knew Chuck and arranged a meeting. Chuck asked Joan to pose for him. That was October 1949. They were married in May 1950.
So many people left the choice of a frame for their portraits up to the artist, the Holders now make frames for his works in a small shop in the home. He does the carpentry, she the finishing of the wood. Their cooperative efforts were recognized in a recent New York Art Show. His painting, in a frame that she designed, was the focal point of the exhibit.
AWARD RECIPIENT
Of all the honors his painting have received (he has a bulging scrapbook of citations), the one that he prizes the most highly is his invitation to the membership in the Salmagundi Club in New York, the oldest American honorary professional art group. Mr. Holder received the Louis Comfort Tiffany National Fellowship Award and won recognition at the Provincetown, Mass., annual art art exhibit and in the annual fall sidewalk show at Greenwich Village, NY.
Florida State Honors accorded the artist include the Henry White Memorial Scholarship Award, the Harry Rich Grand Prize, and the Dr. Charles Stanley Knott award for the best portrait painting. While a student at the University of Florida, he won first-place in All-Florida Colleges’ Award and the All-Southern Colleges’ painting award.
Mr. Holder received the Phi Beta Kappa creative award and was a founder and the first President of the Florida Fine Arts Society.
Classes of oil painting of portraits, still-life, and figures are conducted by Mr. Holder and the Lakeland Art Guild Studio at Lodwick Field on Wednesdays and Fridays at 9:30a.m. and 7:30 p.m. .
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