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Catherine Howe

Artist Biography

Catherine Howe (b. 1960, New York) is a New York based artist who works in both Manhattan and The Hudson Valley. Howe received her MFA from SUNY Buffalo in 1983, and is currently a Graduate Painting Professor at the New York Academy of Art. Lush and densely layered; Howe’s paintings overflow with sensuous color, bold gesture, and riotous energy. Drawing on seventeenth-century Dutch still lifes, unsteady piles of fruit, flowers, silver platters, and glass bowls emerge from her expressionistic brushwork, balancing abstraction and representation. Howe insists that her paintings are not about representation or narrative; rather, she says they are exercises in the evocative power of painting as a material. What appear to be flora, figures, and foods dissolve into abstract flurries of brush marks and fields of commingled colors when observed closely. The painted surfaces vary widely in paint application, with some areas thinly glazed or quickly sketched, and others so thick they appear to be in relief.

Howe has exhibited globally for over twenty years, including shows in Washington, DC, New York, NY, Dallas, TX, Santa Fe, NM, Boca Raton, FL, Los Angeles, CA, Westport, CT, Atlanta, GA, St. Louis, MO, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Madrid, Spain, Paris, France, Istanbul, Turkey, Amsterdam, Netherlands, London, UK, and Munich, Germany to name a few. Her work has been discussed in numerous publications such as The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, Artcritical, BOMB, Whitewall Magazine, il Giornale dell’ Arte, the New Art Examiner, and The Los Angeles Times.