Jason Bard Yarmosky has spent 2026 stepping further into public view, both as a painter with a major museum show behind him and as the boyfriend of actress Katie Holmes. The Brooklyn-based artist, known for portraits that explore aging and memory, has drawn fresh attention this fall as his relationship with Holmes continues to develop in public.
Early Life and Background
Yarmosky was born in 1987 in Poughkeepsie, New York, a small city in the Hudson Valley. He later moved to Brooklyn, where he has built his career as a painter and draftsman.
His artistic direction traces back to childhood. Growing up close to his grandparents, Len and Elaine Bard, who were roughly six decades older than him, Yarmosky developed an early fascination with aging, time, and memory. Museum visits as a child left him noticing that classical art tended to celebrate youth while largely overlooking older subjects, a gap he later set out to address in his own work.
He earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2010, giving him a formal grounding in painting that he then applied to deeply personal subject matter rather than commercial or design-oriented work.
A Career Built on Portraiture
Yarmosky’s reputation rests largely on a decade-long portrait series featuring his grandparents. Between roughly 2010 and 2018, Len and Elaine Bard sat for paintings that placed them in costumes and imagined scenarios, work that let Yarmosky examine vulnerability, care, wisdom, and humor in later life. The series became a kind of celebration of aging that pushed back against cultural habits of sidelining older people’s individuality and dignity.
His paintings move between tenderness and playfulness, pairing the weight of mortality with moments of lightness. Costume, interior settings, and portraiture combine in his work to suggest that humor and imagination can persist even as a body ages or a memory fades.
Beyond the grandparent portraits, Yarmosky has produced other notable bodies of work. His large-scale portrait series, Timeless Women, was once displayed in the Fifth Avenue windows of Bergdorf Goodman in New York, giving his art visibility well beyond the traditional gallery circuit. His painting series Wintered Fields is now part of the permanent collection at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, a significant marker of institutional recognition for a working American painter.
He has also experimented outside straight painting, teaching himself filmmaking to produce a short film tied to his exhibition Dream of the Soft Look, showing a willingness to extend his themes of aging and time into new mediums.
Exhibitions and Recent Recognition
Yarmosky’s most significant recent showcase came at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York, where his solo exhibition Time Has Many Faces ran from January 25 through April 19, 2026. The show gathered new and older paintings and drawings built around his lifelong preoccupation with aging and memory, including works drawn from the decade he spent painting his grandparents.
In an interview tied to the exhibition, Yarmosky described the paintings as representing roughly a decade of exploring different dimensions of aging, from the physical changes to the psychological ones. He has spoken about painting as a form of communication that reaches beyond the purely visual, comparing its emotional pull to that of music.
His work has also been recognized on a wider institutional stage. He is among the artists selected for the Brooklyn Museum’s upcoming Brooklyn Artists Exhibition, organized to mark the museum’s 200th anniversary and spotlight talent from across the borough, with an opening planned for October 4. His paintings and drawings have additionally been shown and collected internationally, and he has been represented by galleries including Aeroplastics, with pieces exhibited through institutions such as the Art Students League of New York.
Coverage of his work has appeared in outlets such as ArtDaily, Hyperallergic, and Fine Art Connoisseur, reflecting a steady, if not blockbuster, level of art-world visibility built over more than a decade of consistent output.
Public Interest: The Relationship With Katie Holmes
Jason Bard Yarmosky’s public profile expanded considerably in the summer of 2026 when he began dating actress Katie Holmes. The pair were first spotted together on July 10 at a screening of the film The Invite in East Hampton, New York, where they were seen holding hands as they entered the theater.
Days later, on July 14, the couple had a dinner date in New York City, with a source telling People that they appeared happy together. Later that month, on July 24, Holmes and Yarmosky made their first official public appearance as a couple at a Ferragamo event at Topping Rose House in Bridgehampton, New York, where they coordinated their outfits in matching navy blue.
The relationship became public in a more formal sense on August 13, when Yarmosky shared a photo of Holmes on his Instagram account, effectively confirming the romance to their combined followers. The pair also shared images from a getaway that included a boat ride and a visit to see work by artist John Chamberlain, several of which Holmes reposted to her own account.
By early September, the relationship appeared to be deepening. On September 6, the couple shared photos from a trip to Italy described by outlets as romantic and affectionate. A source told People on September 11 that Holmes has become close to Yarmosky fairly quickly and feels very comfortable in the relationship, adding that the two spent an enjoyable summer together and continue to like spending time with each other.
That same week, Holmes and Yarmosky were seen together at several 2026 New York Fashion Week events, including Net-a-Porter’s Incredible Women cocktail gathering in SoHo on September 10 and a Calvin Klein show the following day, where they were photographed holding hands. The couple was also reportedly seen together at a Cult Gaia show earlier in the week.
For Holmes, who divorced Tom Cruise in 2012 and shares daughter Suri, now 20, with him, the relationship with Yarmosky marks her most public romance since a brief connection with musician Bobby Wooten III in 2022. Yarmosky, for his part, has kept his personal life fairly private throughout his career, with his Instagram presence historically centered on his art rather than his relationships, making the visibility of this romance a notable shift.
Some of the imagery from Yarmosky’s Time Has Many Faces exhibition, including depictions of his grandparents dressed as a bunny and as Batman, has drawn renewed attention in coverage of his relationship with Holmes, as journalists profiling the artist have used the show to introduce readers to his body of work.
Final Thoughts
Jason Bard Yarmosky’s career has been built patiently over more than a decade, anchored by an unusually personal project: painting his own grandparents as they aged, and using that intimacy to challenge how art typically treats older subjects. That body of work has earned him gallery representation, a place in a major museum’s permanent collection, and a solo show at Guild Hall, along with a coming appearance in the Brooklyn Museum’s bicentennial exhibition.
At the same time, his relationship with Katie Holmes has introduced him to a much wider audience than the art world alone typically reaches. As of mid-September 2026, the two continue to appear together at public events, with sources describing a relationship that has grown steadily more comfortable since it began in July.
Readers interested in following Jason Bard Yarmosky’s career and personal life are encouraged to share their thoughts and check back for updates as new developments emerge.