Rachel Howard

This article is about the artist. For the New Zealand international footballer, see Rachel Howard (footballer).
Rachel Howard
Born1969 (age 50–51)
Easington, County Durham, England
NationalityBritish
Known forPainting

Rachel Howard (born 1969) is a British artist.

Early life and career

Rachel Howard grew up on a farm in Easington, County Durham. She attended a Quaker school from the age of sixteen, and the stories, concerns and questions raised by religion have had a profound effect on her work throughout her career.[1]

I went to a Quaker school and it had such a powerful effect on my life that I've carried it with me ever since. I'm an atheist now but Quakerism was the first time as a child I came across a religious structure that made some sense … the silence, contemplation, the acknowledgement of our responsibilities not just to each other but also to nature, they are pacifists. I was quite unruly as a child — Quakerism makes you take responsibility for your own actions without being heavy-handed, it's subtle and beautiful. The Quakers believe in celebrating the light within, it'll come as no surprise that James Turrell is a Quaker, for example.[2]

Howard graduated from Goldsmiths College, London, in 1991.

In 1992, Howard was awarded the Prince's Trust Award to support her art practice. She received the British Council Award in 2008, and in 2004 was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize.[3]

She had four children in her twenties, which helped her focus in the studio.[4]

In 2008 Howard designed the front cover for The Big Issue newspaper.[5]

Work

While Howard more recently employs oil paint, from 1995–2008 she primarily used household paint

The fluidity of the paint is so gorgeous I felt like I wanted to conquer it and control it.[6]

Howard allows the paint to separate inside its can so that the pigment and varnish can be used in isolation. The pigment is applied to the edge of the canvas, then diluted and manipulated through the addition of the varnish. Gravity's pull then draws the paint down the canvas.[1]

The first thing that strikes you about [Howard's] pictures, [is] this seamless downpour of paint: a vertical torrent that seems to advance from one painting to another, sometimes fading out before it reaches the bottom of the canvas, only to fall unbidden from the upper edge of another.[7]

Howard's paintings are built architecturally. The terms she uses are those of the builder: construction, reconstruction, building, layering and assembling. Gravity is her brush. Layers of paint accrue built by dripped pathways of paint.[1]

Of her work, Howard says:

I'm interested in how we each make sense of the world. In paintings such as Missive to the Mad and Missive to the Sad, I use the grid in varying degrees of degradation and dissolution, building up the ground and then the grid only to knock it back using gravity, turps and gloss varnish, a balance between control and chaos. They are odes to madness and melancholia, the gentle slip and slide of life, what the mind can do and where it can lead you. I think that's why I'm fascinated with religion and human beliefs and what we need to make it all work.[8]

Sin Paintings

Howard's Sin Paintings comprise seven monumental canvases, each painted in a range of intensely saturated reds, offset by the use of bright yellow and orange. The paintings were exhibited in a solo exhibition entitled Guilty, at the Bohen Foundation, New York in 2003.[9] The paintings have a glossy, mirror-shine surface, through which a simple cruciform shape emerges. They do differ from one another; Pride is an offering of brilliant red down-strokes, with a cross discernible in its centre; the reds of Envy are more individuated, with yellows breaking through here and there, and the cross far less readable; the hues of Anger are in a darker, more brooding range.[9]

Although the religious element seems obvious within these works, and the series certainly engages with issues relating to religion or morality, Howard herself has confessed that the title 'Guilty' in part refers to the guilty pleasure of painting.[10]

Suicide Paintings

Howard's Suicide Paintings were first shown at the Bohen Foundation in New York, 2007, and were later exhibited at Haunch of Venison, London, 2008[11][12] The series evolved after an acquaintance of Howard's committed suicide. He was discovered, not in the imagined drama, 'swinging from the rafters', but kneeling in a pose almost of prayer. It was this particular detail that Howard found most disturbing, and which led her to create the series, coupled with the fact that for her, suicide is one of the last taboos.[13] The source material for the paintings came from trawling through forensic magazines and internet sites for pictures of suicides.[14] These were then abstracted from their contexts within Howard's rapidly executed line drawings, forming the basis of the paintings.[7]

The series ultimately offers an investigation into the aesthetics of suicide.[15] Possible instruments of death are depicted – a pair of scissors, a ladder, as well as the symbolic, lone Black Dog (a common metaphor for depression, coined by 18th Century writer Samuel Johnson[16]). Then there are the faceless figures; many hang from ropes, while the body of a woman lying across a bed recalls the psychosexual claustrophobia of Walter Sickert.[12]

Howard's figures are on the verge of disappearing completely, dangerously close to ceasing to exist even as an image, slipping away from the canvas's representation: all that remains is the macabre trace of a body, almost as immaterial as a shadow cast upon an empty room.[15]

Sue Hubbard wrote of the series in The Independent:

The creation of these ambitious canvases is a psychological and physical battle, which demonstrates that there is still a role for emotionally articulate art that has something important to say about the poignancy and tragedy of the human condition.[12]

Via Dolorosa

Between 2005–2009 Howard worked on her first commission, titled Repetition is Truth - Via Dolorosa.[17] Via Dolorosa, Latin for 'Way of Suffering', is the name of a street within the Old City of Jerusalem, believed to be the path that Jesus walked, bearing the cross, towards his crucifixion. It is also another name for the fourteen Stations of the Cross, which depict these final hours of his life – The Passion.

While Howard's fourteen paintings reference The Passion, the creation of the series was in fact provoked by one of the most shocking photographs to emerge from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.[17] Detainees routinely endured torture and humiliation at the hands of American military personnel, as exposed through the media. The particular image was of a prisoner standing on a box, hooded and wired with electrodes; thus the box becomes the modern day equivalent of the Cross – a tool of humiliation and torment.[18] Thus, the paintings offer a broader commentary on the universality of human rights abuses and people's capability for cruelty towards each other. A publication accompanies the work with texts by art historian and curator Joachim Pissarro and Shami Chakrabarti.[19]

Joachim Pissarro has described the series as "sublime", in accordance with Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgement:

The sublime is to be found in an object even devoid of form, so far as it immediately involves, or else by its presence, provokes, a representation of limitlessness, yet with a super-added thought of its totality.[20]

It is this idea of limitlessness that Howard seeks to engage with, the belief that human suffering is never-ending, hence the name of the work – Repetition is Truth.[18]

One enters a room with fourteen Stations of the Cross by Rachel Howard – her Via Dolorosa. Monumental, quiet, graceful, discrete, luscious, restrained and yet, at the same time, forceful, masterful, deafening – these paintings yield more layers of emotions than one can absorb all at once.[20]

Selected solo exhibitions
  • 1999 'Rachel Howard: New Paintings', A22 Gallery, London, UK (curated by Honey Luard)
  • 2001 'Painting 2001', Anne Faggionato, London.
  • 2002 'Tightrope', Shaheen Modern and Contemporary Art, Ohio, USA.
  • 2003 'Can't Breathe Without You', Anne Faggionato, London, UK.
  • 2003 'Guilty', Bohen Foundation, New York, USA.
  • 2007 'Fiction/Fear/Fact', Bohen Foundation, New York, USA
  • 2007 'Rachel Howard - New Paintings', Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles CA, USA
  • 2008 'How to Disappear Completely - New Work by Rachel Howard', Haunch of Venison, London, UK.
  • 2008 'Rachel Howard: invited by Philippa van Loon', Museum van Loon, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
  • 2009 'Der Wald', Haunch of Venison, Zurich, Switzerland.
  • 2010 'Human Shrapnel - oil drawings on paper', Other Criteria, New Bond London.
  • 2011 'Folie A Deux', Blain|Southern, 21 Dering Street, London, UK.
  • 2011 'Repetition is Truth', Via Dolorosa, Museo Madre, Naples, Italy.
  • 2011 'Still Life / Still Here Rachel Howard New Paintings', Sala Pelaires, Palma, Mallorca, Spain.
  • 2014 'Northern Echo' Blain|Southern, Hanover Square, London, UK.
  • 2015 Rachel Howard At Sea 'Jerwood Gallery' Hastings, UK
  • 2016 Rachel Howard MACRO Testaccio, Rome, Italy[21]
  • 2018 'Der Kuss' Blain|Southern, Hanover Square, London, UK.
  • 2018 'Repetition is Truth - Via Dolorosa' Newport Street Gallery, Vauxhall, London, UK.[22]
  • 2019 L'appel du vide Blain|Southern, New York, US[23].
  • 2018 'Rachel Howard' MASS MoCA, Massachusetts, US.[24]

Collections
  • Ackland Art Museum, North Carolina
  • Museum van Loon, Amsterdam
  • David Roberts Foundation, London
  • Goss-Michael Foundation, Dallas
  • Murderme collection, London.
  • Hiscox collection, London
  • Jerwood Collection
  • Tate Archive
  • Pio Monte Della Misericordia, Naples, IT
  • The wareHOUSE, Wieland Collection, Atlanta, US

Notes and references
  1. Hubbard, Sue "Towards Meaning: The Abstract Paintings of Rachel Howard" in Rachel Howard -New Paintings Pulchritude Press, 2007
  2. Butler, Sharon (5 September 2019). "Rachel Howard: A fascination with madness". Two Coats of Paint. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
  3. Artnet "Rachel Howard"
  5. Rachel Howard website. Retrieved on 2012-06-20.
  6. Howard, Rachel Rachel Howard Painting 2001, co-published by Other Criteria and Anne Faggionato
  7. Dillon, Brian "On Pathos" in How to Disappear Completely, published by Haunch of Venison, 2008
  8. Butler, Sharon (5 September 2019). "Rachel Howard: A fascination with madness". Two Coats of Paint. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
  9. Glueck, Grace "Art in Review: Rachel Howard Guilty" 28 November 2003
  10. Pollack, Barbara "Rachel Howard: Guilty" Time Out New York, 18 December 2003 – 1 January 2004
  11. "Goings on about town – Art" 14 May 2007
  12. Hubbard, Sue "A voyage to the dark side" 21 January 2008
  13. Howard, Rachel "In Conversation with Adam E. Mendelsohn" in Fiction/Fear/Fact published by Other Criteria, 2007
  14. Jones, Laura K. "London Dispatch" 20 February 2008
  15. Husni-Bey, Adelita "Rachel Howard – Haunch of Venison" March/April 2008
  16. Noted. "This is where the black dog metaphor for depression comes from". www.noted.co.nz. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
  17. Caragliano, Renata La Repubblica, 18 April 2011
  18. Esposito, Pasquale Il Mattino, 16 April 2011
  19. Repetition is Truth - via Dolorosa, Murderme, 2009
  20. Pissarro, Joachim "Representing Limitlessness:Rachel's Howard's Repetition is Truth – Via Dolorosa" in Repetition is Truth - via Dolorosa, Murderme, 2009
  21. "Rachel Howard - Museo Macro". www.museomacro.it.
  22. "Damien Hirst gives exhibition to former spot painter Rachel Howard". theartnewspaper.com.
  23. "Rachel Howard, 'L'appel du vide',". Blain Southern. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
  24. "Reacting to a 'tidal wave' of endless violence". The Berkshire Eagle.
gollark: Probably.
gollark: I have thousands of lines of configuration and code for my stupid things.
gollark: I do lots of stupid things.
gollark: Me?
gollark: Idea: procedural generation of near-identical ethical systems which produce the desired results in any ethical situation.
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