(Above: “Shape 53 Arcade” and “Dance of the Stowaway,” two wall reliefs by David Holzman.)

David Holzman wakes early every morning, trudges across his driveway in Avon, CT, to his garage-studio, puts a 6″ x 9″ frame over a piece of paper, and scribbles, letting his hand go on auto-pilot.

Once his hand rests, Holzman looks at what’s spilled out, finds the image within and brings it to life with detail and matte flashe paint. In this way, since July 2011, Holzman has completed almost 3,000 of these images. He calls the collection The Book of Umm.

This near religious balance of ritual and restriction guides much of Holzman’s work. He used square templates to sketch the modules for a nine-foot, hand-carved arch and he used woodcuts to print his adaptation of the Torah, working chapter by chapter, condensing epics into single pages. It took 12 years.

(Two from Holzman’s ongoing The Book of Umm.)

Time has been the biggest constraint, and opportunity, in Holzman’s creative life. A retired schoolteacher who raised a family, he learned to make the most of every second he could. “Built into your day, there are these moments, like being stopped at a red light,” he said during a visit to his studio.

“I lived making art in the interstitial spaces and time. This had an effect on what kind of art I made. It was stuff that could be done in a few minutes here and there.”

Whether he takes an hour or a year, Holzman’s works are like divine epics, particularly the hand-carved wood reliefs and 3D renderings of Holman’s trademark figures: humanoids that seem familiar yet alien, like earlier versions of us, writhe in agony and ecstasy. A cocooned figure is hoisted into the sky as a serpent slithers, couples dance with shadowy imps, angel-like beings flit around what looks like a hole to another dimension.

There’s an elemental, universal aspect to Holzman’s work. His figures would fit as well in a cave painting as they would a Catholic cathedral. These are not religious pieces, though. Holzman describes himself as secular. But his work is otherworldly.

The religious imagery may stem from Holzman’s arts education, which amounts to looking at art. That’s it. As a child he would escape an unhappy Brooklyn home to The Met and MoMA. Picasso’s Girl in the Mirror, Wilfredo Lam’s The Jungle, and indigenous art from around the world spoke to him.

Later, in Chicago, he became enamored with woodcuts, one of his many media, and Holzman still makes regular pilgrimages to museums. All of this has shaped his eye. Since so much art in history has been commissioned or inspired by religion, particularly Christianity, that aesthetic worked its way into Holzman’s imagery, blending, ironically yet naturally, with his appreciation for indigenous art.

Christian art, specifically altars and predellas, have influenced him directly, structurally speaking: “I really was attracted to the architectural quality of altarpieces,” Holzman said. “They have these archways and these spires and these peaks that lend themselves to narrative format.”

That’s the key word: narrative. Holzman wants viewers to walk from his art with a sense of what they’ve seen. He could have used his considerable talent to be an abstract painter, but what would be the point?

“What,” Holzman wonders, “Is more compelling than human connection?”

Holzman brought up Stendhal Syndrome, a physical response to beauty often likened to an anxiety attack. “You are so overwhelmed,” said Holzman, who believes he’s had this experience a few times, including in Florence’s Brancacci Chapel and while viewing Kandinsky’s watercolors as a child:“[That] just blew my mind. It was like, ‘Oh my God, art could be like this?’ It was like getting an injection of Ritalin.” All art has that potential, he says.

“The worst feeling in the world is to be with other people who are reacting coldly to you. Art is the opposite of that. Art is static electricity; getting a shock.”

Holzman likens this sensation to a romance’s early days, when you feel a titillating jolt between you and the other person. “That’s what art could be. If you have the opportunity to set up the conditions for that to happen, why wouldn’t you?”

For as much incredible work as he’s created, Holzman doesn’t think he’s special. “There’s no difference between an artist and anybody else, except for one thing: the artist decided, made a decision in their head, that they would consider themselves an artist, and they would proceed to make art.”

“People need to give themselves permission to be creative.”