BiographyPast Exhibitions
Available Works
3 Feb - 25 Feb 2012
Howells's paintings absorb the seemingly relentless stream of information which crowd our daily lives sourced from television, radio, the internet and print media. Words, phrases and images are harvested, almost arbitrarily and repositioned on found panels and pieces of wood: tiny details and passages of text which are continually developed, obliterated and enlarged. "... the smallest part becomes the most important", he comments, "...you have to believe in every part of the work so it's identity runs through it like DNA". His obsessive, time-consuming process of painting is coupled with a desire to overwhelm and give the viewer a near cinematic experience through scale, achieved in such monumental works as Captain America vs The Rest of the World which spans nearly five metres in length.
The starting point for much of Howells's work is the graphic language of 1950's Americana, filtered through elements of abstract expressionism, street art, graffiti and pop art. However the intense re-working and continual process of creation and obliteration negates the intentional anachronisms of his work. He is obliterating the chronology of art history in the same way he erases the texts of which the paintings are composed. Indeed, the finished works often suggest that the artist is searching back further to find an older classical painting standard, finding the rhythms of harmony in the order and placement of colours, images and words. The resulting paintings remain bewildering contemporary expressions of our lives.
Click here to download an E-Catalogue