Portrait painter and illustrator Loren Conrad Holmwood (1892–1985) was born in Puyallup, Washington. He began painting as a child and by the age of fifteen was an accomplished artist. He and his three brothers were taught to play musical instruments by their father and travelled as a band playing for dances and proms (later, his brother Owen also became an artist). In 1918 Holmwood joined the Navy, where he played in the band, then upon discharge he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago.
By the early 1930s he had settled in Laguna Beach, at the former studio/home of the Western landscape painter and muralist Edgar Payne (1882–1947). Part of the Laguna Beach art colony, Holmwood painted portraits of local figures, including of the artist Joane Cromwell (1895–1969), now in the collection of Western Illinois Museum.
1936 he travelled from California to Hammerfest and North Cape in North Norway in search of source material.
Holmwood also worked as an illustrator, producing covers for magazines such as Colliers, Country Gentlemen and Literary Digest, and illustrating the book 'Whispering Wind, Folktales of the Navaho Indians'.
In 1971, resident at Tahoe City, he was honoured as Man of the Year by the Greater Lake Tahoe Chamber of Commerce, for his gift of fifty-two acres along Ward Creek to the Washoe community in Nevada. He died in Laguna Beach in 1985.
