Born in New York City, Arlene Holmes was involved with art at an early age, visiting galleries, museums, and finding a profound attachment to how land, water, sky and buildings have spacial relationships.  Dividing her time between New York, Florida and Vermont, at first taking classes at the Art Student’s League, National Academy, and Queens college. Artists such as Wolf Kahn,  Louis Finkelstein influenced and confirmed the various mediums such as pastel, oil paint on a variety of surfaces.

As reviewed at the Arts Society of Kingston in New York

“Arlene Holmes paints large landscapes in oil. Her encounter with her subjects is realized through a liberated and fluid use of the oil medium. The free application of paint allows her to quickly delineate the forms of earth. The best of these depictions of sky. Land, and lighting their varying moods establish fields of pattern romantic in vein and imbued with emotional overtones. Two large paintings on the gallery’s wall are forceful, engaging ventures. Foreground trees posed against middle distance mountains painted in blues, greens, grays and browns engulf the viewer with immensity.. Power, awe, and poetry all have a place in Holmes’ canvases. Inclusions of smaller oils on paper define a sense of place. Not at all lacking in visual value, their primary interest is allowing us to glimpse the artist taking notes.”

Holmes’s paintings reside in permanent collections of the Micanopy Historical Society Museum, Albany Institute of History and Art, Citi Bank, Ralph Lauren, Mahoney Law firm, and numerous private collections.

“My goal is to produce a work that is the trace of a magnificent struggle. A major source of inspiration is Cezanne and Monet. Plein air painting is often my method.  My inspiration has always been form, texture, and color changes in natural light, thus clouds, trees, water reflections are large components in my imagery. “

“After retiring from teaching art in an upstate NY school, I moved to Florida and spend part of the year in Vermont painting in pastels and oils, presently, doing a series of trees in different light and seasons. “