Michael Howard
An engaging and intellectually rigorous instructor, Michael Howard composes an American landscape of suburban homes and construction sites with an eye for geometry and abstraction. His emphasis is surface and color; a strong focus in his own work and his teaching.
Howard received his BFA from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and his MFA from the University of Cincinnati. He has taught at the Kendall College of Art and Design and the University of Washington. In 1998, he received the Seattle Art Museum Betty Bowen Award for an emerging artist. He has also exhibited in Georgia, Tennessee, Michigan and Chicago.
Currently residing in Milwaukee, Howard holds a faculty position in Fine Arts at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. His work is represented by Francise Seders Gallery in Seattle.
To view additional work by this artist, please visit his website.
Artist's Statement
Visual language involves an intriguing paradox. It is odd to use the word language when there is no definitive visual grammar. Still it happens, as an effective, sensitive and distinct form of thought. Its very effectiveness exists in this lack of certainty, in a constant flux of contextual relations.
As a painter, it is the circumstances in which a painting is developed and the formal terms that make up its presence. These concerns intrigue me. The optical/visual image imports a whole field of thought existing outside the work. The painting, as a physical object, exports various circumstances, conditions (full of infinite variables and peculiarities), to be taken into the field of discourse surrounding contemporary painting. Simply said, the real dynamic exist in the relationship between the outside and the inside, the object and the subject. The results appear so specific. Yet, the locating and the situating of a painting are never entirely known or fixed. It is, rather, always a revealing, a discovering, an exploring; always a "what if".
It is important to impart on the student a sense of this "what if". It is important that their studio work becomes about exploration and innovation. Formal theories are taught as a way to move through thought and, ultimately, as an attempt to challenge current understanding. These formal elements are the "words" which make up a painting. The beginning student accumulates awareness and experience with formal elements of painting through problem solving and critical evaluation. The intermediate and advanced students take on more independence and responsibility. As Yves-Alain Bois wrote of Roland Barthes, "He didn't show us how to write really, but how to put ourselves in a position to write." The student should be able to locate such a position, and understand the richness inherent in this paradoxical visual language which occurs both inside and outside the field of painting.
Visual language involves an intriguing paradox. It is odd to use the word language when there is no definitive visual grammar. Still it happens, as an effective, sensitive and distinct form of thought. Its very effectiveness exists in this lack of certainty, in a constant flux of contextual relations.
As a painter, it is the circumstances in which a painting is developed and the formal terms that make up its presence. These concerns intrigue me. The optical/visual image imports a whole field of thought existing outside the work. The painting, as a physical object, exports various circumstances, conditions (full of infinite variables and peculiarities), to be taken into the field of discourse surrounding contemporary painting. Simply said, the real dynamic exist in the relationship between the outside and the inside, the object and the subject. The results appear so specific. Yet, the locating and the situating of a painting are never entirely known or fixed. It is, rather, always a revealing, a discovering, an exploring; always a "what if".
It is important to impart on the student a sense of this "what if". It is important that their studio work becomes about exploration and innovation. Formal theories are taught as a way to move through thought and, ultimately, as an attempt to challenge current understanding. These formal elements are the "words" which make up a painting. The beginning student accumulates awareness and experience with formal elements of painting through problem solving and critical evaluation. The intermediate and advanced students take on more independence and responsibility. As Yves-Alain Bois wrote of Roland Barthes, "He didn't show us how to write really, but how to put ourselves in a position to write." The student should be able to locate such a position, and understand the richness inherent in this paradoxical visual language which occurs both inside and outside the field of painting.