About Liam Holden

where he now lives and works.I was born in the  village of Inistioge on the river Nore in Co. Kilkenny. My first venture was to Dublin in 1981, with a scholarship to study at the National College of Art & Design. In 1984 I switched track and took up an apprenticeship with Roger Walker at Lagan Castle Pottery in my home county of Kilkenny. Success came quick when I won the Apprentice Ceramic Award later that year at Kilkenny Arts Week. I went onto study crafts at Grennan Mill Crafts School, Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny for a further year.

Spreading my wings again in 1985 I moved to Dingle in Co. Kerry where I spent four summers fishing lobsters with the local poet Danny Sheehy. Through my adventures with Danny I developed a love of the sea that was to have a profound influence on my journey as a painter. Water remains my principal inspiration – horizons, islands, boats and coastlines all feature in the paintings. I work intuitively, applying paint in layers to create texture and depth of colour, and will revisit a work time and time again until I am satisfied with its emotional resonance.

My first solo show came directly from my personal experiences of fishing around the Blasket Islands off the Dingle Peninsula.

In 1994 I moved from Dingle to Tinahely in Co.Wicklow. In 2021 I returned to Dingle where I now live and work.

For the last ten years I have been involved in a project that started with the building of a naomhóg boat, a boat unique to the Peninsula. Subsequently this lead to a number of epic voyages on the sea culminating in the Camino by Sea odyssey.

My paintings are in private collections in Ireland, Europe and U.S.A.