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David Hollier in front of his mural of Winston Churchill. Courtesy of New Apostle Gallery.

About the Artist: A British-born, Brooklyn-based artist and founder of New Apostle Gallery, David Hollier creates what he calls “Imago Verbosa“—photorealist-inspired paintings in which lines of verse and prose build to create a portrait. His subjects, which range from political change-makers to pop-culture celebrities, have included JFK, Frida Kahlo, and Madonna. Free-form calligraphy is central to his practice, with words creating light or dark contrasts with their surfaces. The language he draws from is culled from famous speeches and song lyrics. 

Why We Like It: Hollier’s work seeks to bridge the worlds of public art and pop culture. To do that, he sometimes produces eye-capturing, large-scale murals, like his popular mural of Nelson Mandela in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. Currently, he is raising money to fund a large-scale mural celebrating the legacy of the late John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsberg on Marion Street in Brooklyn’s Ocean Hill neighborhood, which would be a welcome addition.

According to the Artist: “I love doing murals. It is not just the challenge of creating artwork at such a giant scale that appeals to me, but also the opportunity to communicate things I feel strongly about. It’s important that the work resonates with the community where it’s created. For this project, I’m painting images of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and John Lewis; the texts within each image are quotes from each of the subjects. So the text creating the RBG image comes from a speech she gave on February 6, 2017, at Stanford Memorial Church and the text within the John Lewis image comes from the speech he gave in 1963 at the March on Washington, at the age of 23, right before his mentor and friend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.”

David Hollier
Madonna
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David Hollier, Madonna (2020). Courtesy of New Apostle Gallery.

David Hollier
John Lewis
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David Hollier, John Lewis (2020). Courtesy of New Apostle Gallery.

David Hollier
Grace Jones 
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David Hollier, Grace Jones (2020). Courtesy of New Apostle Gallery.

David Hollier
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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David Hollier, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (2020). Courtesy of New Apostle Gallery.

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