Joseph Holston's distinctive abstractionist style has evolved over a fine arts career spanning thirty years. He has worked in multiple media, believing that each has its own distinctive characteristics and unique capacity to give voice to his work. He sees his career as having had two distinct phases. During the first, he says, he learned to represent, to copy from nature. During this second period, he has been delving deeply into his spiritual self, searching for his own voice.

Holston is a critically acclaimed artist who has exhibited at numerous museums and institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution's Anacostia Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Fort Worth Museum of Fine Art in Texas.

His work is included in the permanent collections of museums including the Rhode Island School of Design Museum in Providence, Rhode Island, and the Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis, Maryland, and in the private collections of Jesse Jackson, Vernon Jordan, Cicely Tyson and Wynton Marsalis.

Holston's work has been commissioned by the AFL-CIO, the National Urban Coalition and the National Medical Association, among others. He was the official artist of the Chicago Jazz Festival in 1996 and 1997.