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Joseph Holodook is one of America's finest painters of naive country Americana. In the small towns and villages of Holodook's America you can sip the cider, sit by the cracker barrel, go sugaring and skating in the winter and enjoy life as it used to be, and perhaps ought to be.
Joseph Holodook has been drawing and painting as long as he can remember. One family member snapped a photograph of Joseph at age 2, sitting at the kitchen table sketching his mother on the back of an envelope. This love of drawing and art continued throughout his childhood and took a giant leap forward when his priest gave him a set of oil paints when he was only 9.
As he grew and his abilities increased, it became known in the small Hudson River town of Hudson, New York that Joseph had a natural ability, one which his teachers did their best to nurture. In high school Joseph was allowed to use a classroom, alone, for three straight periods a day so that he could paint and draw without interruption.
After high school he worked hard during the day so that he could afford to study art at the local college in the evenings. It was in college that he came under the tutelage of Lawrence Montaldo, professor of art and former head of the art department at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. At about this time Joseph was introduced to famous landscape painter John E. Hesse who critiqued the young painter's work and had a profound influence on his future art.
In 1976 Joseph won his first honor, the Love and Heritage Award, for one of his works of folk Americana. He went on to exhibit at the Columbia County Fair, the Hudson NY Art Fair, Columbia-Green Community College in Greeneport, NY, and the Columbia County Courthouse upon the special invitation of the Treasurer of the County. He also had an ongoing one-man show at the New Leaf Gallery in Hudson, NY from 1991 through 1997.
Over the years Joseph Holodook has created hundreds of pieces of art, many of them folk art and Americana that sold quickly in the traditional markets and galleries of the Hudson River Valley, and many of his works grace fine homes as well as major corporations, among them Ernst & Young and ITG Boston. He has also created restoration artwork for the Sacred Heart Church and for the St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church, both in Hudson, NY.
In recent years Holodook has turned his interests toward another St. Nicholas -- Santa Claus -- as well as other holiday-related images which show the influence of the works of Norman Rockwell and the Wyeths on his art. Joseph paints primarily in oil on canvas, and his works range in size from 16x20 to 36x48.
After joining Porterfield's Fine Art Licensing, Joseph Holodook began to license his artistic works into a broad range of home decor and decorative products. These efforts have broadened public awareness of his art and increased his name recognition throughout the United States and have helped make him one of America's best-loved painters of country Americana themes.
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