Lonnie Holley: Coming Through the Doors

Every face in these paintings…they’re all the people—especially women—that have supported me. – Lonnie Holley

Edel Assanti presents an exhibition of three paintings on quilt by Lonnie Holley, inaugurating our new St James’s gallery, coinciding with the artist’s Inserzioni commission at Castello di Rivoli, Italy (27 March – 23 August 2026). 

The group of works combine Holley’s compositional painting technique with his sculptural practice of using found materials to voice embedded everyday histories. Whilst Holley, alongside Thornton Dial, is understood as a principal conduit of the Yard Art show of the American South to mainstream art discourse, quilt-making is an equally significant, parallel art tradition endemic to Black artists of the Southern states. Recognising Holley and Dial’s close friendships with the Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers from the 1990s onwards, Holley’s gesture of painting on quilts is both a tribute and statement about the interconnected nature of these mediums of artistic expressions.

Dating from 2020-21, these paintings were produced during a residency at the Elaine de Kooning House, and are among the first works in which Holley developed his unique technique of layering spray-paint over gestural underpainting. Purples, ochres, and deep reds hover in the background, as spectral wisps of stars and stripes weave through compositions, contemplating how so many destinies are bound together under symbols of fluctuating beliefs and identities. Holley’s kaleidoscopic compositions of interlocking facial profiles pay homage to ancestral memories of both known and unsung heroes who preceded him: those who established the cultural framework that facilitated his own artistic expression, as well as those who sustain the ongoing, multigenerational struggle for social justice. 

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Lonnie Holley, When We Were Together, 2022. Acrylic, gesso, spray paint, and oil stick on quilted fabric over wood panel. 122.6 x 122.6 x 5.1 cm, 48 1/4 x 48 1/4 x 2 in. © Lonnie Holley. Courtesy the artist and Edel Assanti.