Oliver Holms — Notes

Apr 23, 2025

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
—Marcel Proust

Apr 10, 2025 Bright red Chinese lanterns with gold decorations strung across a budding tree in front of a brick apartment building. Multiple strings of these traditional lanterns create a festive display, likely for Lunar New Year celebrations. The lanterns stand out vividly against the blue sky and new green foliage of the tree, with some lanterns marked "LNER" visible in the arrangement. The multi-story residential building provides a warm-colored backdrop for this cultural decoration.
Apr 9, 2025

Street Portraits: Akinyemi, Savile Row — April 2025

air and light and time and space

Apr 8, 2025

‘- you know, I’ve either had a family, a job, something
has always been in the
way
but now
I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light.
for the first time in my life I’m going to have a place and
the time to
create.’
no baby, if you’re going to create
you’re going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you’re on
welfare,
you’re going to create with part of your mind and your
body blown
away,
you’re going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquakes, bombardment,
flood and fire.
baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don’t create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.

Charles Bukowski

Apr 7, 2025 The interior of a historic cathedral or church featuring an ornate altar under a grand archway. The ceiling is decorated with a Renaissance-style fresco depicting religious figures, angels, and heavenly scenes with golden/orange tones. The walls are made of dark marble or stone, and the altar area includes classical columns supporting a decorative canopy. A religious statue or relic appears to be displayed within the altar space, illuminated by candlelight in the otherwise dimly lit sanctuary. Church pews are visible in the foreground, facing the altar. The architecture combines Baroque and Renaissance elements with dramatic lighting highlighting the sacred space.

Girona, Spain — September 2022.

Apr 6, 2025 A symmetrical grand staircase with dual curved staircases meeting in the center. The stairs are made of white marble or stone with elaborate wrought iron railings featuring scrollwork patterns. Large windows flood the space with natural light, creating a bright, airy atmosphere in this elegant interior. Three large black dog sculptures displayed in an art gallery. The sculptures are life-sized, depicting dogs with pointed ears and alert postures, arranged in a triangular formation on a wooden floor with white gallery walls in the background. An elegant curved staircase with ornate black wrought iron railings inside a building. The staircase features white steps and leads to a bright hallway with arched ceilings and white walls. The design combines classical architectural elements with decorative metalwork.

Ron Mueck at Thaddaeus Ropac

Apr 5, 2025

style

style is the answer to everything — a fresh way to approach a dull or a
dangerous thing.
to do a dull thing with style
is preferable to doing a dangerous thing
without it.

Joan of Arc had style
John the Baptist
Christ
Socrates
Caesar,
Garcia Lorca.

style is the difference,
a way of doing,
a way of being done.

6 herons standing quietly in a pool of water
or you walking out of the bathroom naked
without seeing
me.

from: Love is a Dog From Hell by Charles Bukowski

Apr 3, 2025

Walk until your day becomes interesting
— Rolf Potts

Apr 2, 2025 The image shows a structure wrapped in teal-colored construction scaffolding and protective netting, visible through bare tree branches against a clear blue sky. The building appears to be under renovation or construction, with multiple levels of scaffolding surrounding it. Leafless trees with light-colored trunks frame the scene, and a lamppost is visible to the right side. The perspective is looking upward through the tree branches toward the scaffolded structure.
Apr 1, 2025 This image shows an urban development scene near a railway. In the foreground is a construction site with stacked materials, temporary structures, and a container marked "BLOCK 4." Multiple railway tracks run along the right side, with overhead electrical lines and signal towers. In the background, several high-rise apartment or office buildings are under construction, with at least one visible crane. The scene is photographed during golden hour or sunset, giving warm lighting to the industrial landscape. Brick buildings are visible on the left side, and the entire area appears to be undergoing significant redevelopment with new towers rising behind the existing infrastructure.
Mar 31, 2025

Things slip out of life and out of place and the photograph’s role is to fix this bruise of memory.
— Peter Mitchell

Mar 30, 2025 Othodox Jewish man in black hat and robes riding past on a grey bike holding the handlebars and his phone in his left hand. Warmlate afternoon sunlight is streaming through the railway arch in the background behind him.
Mar 28, 2025 A blooming white cherry tree stands in full flower in a park setting, surrounded by still-bare deciduous trees. Beneath the tree are wooden picnic tables on a grassy area. A woman and small child stand under the blossoms, with a pink scooter nearby. A trash bin labeled LITTER sits in the corner of this early spring scene, with a metal fence visible in the background. To the left, two children are climbing a tree
Mar 26, 2025

“I often think that I don’t have a single new idea in my head. But the big mistake is to just wait for inspiration to happen. It won’t come looking for you. You have to start doing something: you have to build a trap to catch it. I like to do that by starting the very mundane process of tidying my studio. It may seem like it has nothing to do with the creative job in hand but I think tidying up is a form of daydreaming, and what you’re really doing is tidying your mind. It’s a kind of mental preparation. It’s a way of getting your mind in place to notice something. And that’s what being creative is really: it’s noticing when something interesting is starting to happen.”
—Brian Eno

Via @_nitch

Mar 24, 2025 view through undergrowth looking down on a Victorian railway viaduct in North London. The vegetation is framing the viaduct and there are buildings on the horizon.
Mar 22, 2025

Don’t think.
—Ray Bradbury

Mar 22, 2025 Looking down an overgrown river. The banks are covered with vegetation and trees overhang the river obscuring the sky. The water is a muddy green. There is a pool of light on the water in the centre of frame where the light is breaking through the canopy
Mar 20, 2025 looking up to the sky through the stones arches of a ruined church in Lisbon. The structure in the foreground is shrouded in scaffolding covered with white netting. Some warm coloured sunlight is hitting the nearer arch and the sky is cloudy.
Mar 18, 2025

Why not do it now?
— Tyler Cowen

Mar 13, 2025 looking down hill from the edge of Parliament Hill towards central London. The path is unofficial and made by people walking across the grass. It forks just before a barrier of red and orange hazard tape stretched between posts on either side of the path. There are trees on either side of the path in the top corners and in the lower right there is a Y shaped shadow from a tree trunk that is an inverted mirror of the Y shape of the path
Mar 12, 2025 looking out towards central london from Parliament Hill, with the view framed between two stands of trees, focussing the eye on a tower block that is standing much taller than the residential buildings that surround it.
Mar 11, 2025 Blue sign on white wall, with — All things arise, exist, and expire — written in Thai above and English below in white text. The bottom half of the frame is full of fake flowers, mostly pink, yellow and purple orchids.
Mar 10, 2025

I don’t think of it as art — I just make things I like bigger, assuming that if I like them some other people might too.
— Corita Kent

Mar 9, 2025

Keiran Fourtet doing what he does best, and the moon while waiting for an Uber home.

Mar 6, 2025

Tomorrow

The one thing all fools have in common is that they are always getting ready to start.
—Seneca.

“The sure sign of an amateur is that he has a million plans and they all start tomorrow.”
Steven Pressfield, from Turning Pro