[1] Born in Fremont, Ohio, Holland began sending drawings to Walt Disney and The Saturday Evening Post[2] at the age of 15.
[13] By 1986, the artist was so firmly established as a prominent presence in the graphics community that The Washington Post said Holland was "the undisputed star of American Illustration".
[4] Writing for Print magazine, author Steven Heller wrote, "As Pollock redefined plastic art, Holland has radically changed the perception of illustration".
[14] In Holland's ink drawings, which were most prominently featured on the op-ed page of The New York Times, the artist has credited German satirist Heinrich Kley and Austrian expressionist Alfred Kubin as having significantly informed his own black-and-white work.
The artist also sites Mexican muralism of the 1920s as being of significant inspiration and in particular "Los Tres Grandes" (the three great ones): Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros.
It was the accepted standard of the time (1968) that art directors dictated or implied what they wanted an illustrator to create as a finished assignment.
[6] There are several illustrators whose work brought about a fundamental and lasting change in this dictatorial method of art direction and Holland can be counted among the first.
[17] The New York Times art director Jean-Claude Suares can also take a great deal of credit in this fundamental curatorial change to the way that illustration was viewed from a top-down "do as you are told" profession to a more artist-driven form of artistic communication.
[20] The primary stated purpose of the ASIP was to educate its members and others regarding the rights of illustrators to receive royalties and licensing fees for the use of their work.
[21] In 2008, Holland and fellow Illustration Partnership of America (IPA) board member Cynthia Turner submitted comments to The Committee on the Judiciary, regarding The Orphan Works Bill of 2008 and its potential threat to artist rights.