He found his motifs largely in his hometown's forestry and agriculture, and he eventually acquired a good reputation as a portrait painter.

After the First World War, he settled in Sandefjord, where his sculpture of the priest and hymn writer Magnus Brostrup Landstad was installed in 1928.

[4][5] Together with Myllarguten (1940) at the Nordagutu train station, the Ulabrand monument in Ula (1933), and the bust of Harald Sohlberg in Røros, it is considered his main work.

[1] Distinctive works by Holmen include many of the tombstones, grave markers, and reliefs, close to 60 altogether, which decorate cemeteries in many places in Norway.

Holmen's early works includes a number of illustrations in some of Lorens Berg's local history books (bygdebøker).