Exhibition Notes

Undressed:

 A Body of Work Exploring Our Human Connection With Trees

Trees are our still, silent counterparts, rooted in the landscape. Our ladders to the stars. Trees have long provided a metaphor for the human condition as we search for our roots, branch out in new directions or turn over a new leaf. Their seasonal transformation can remind us of both our aspirations and our mortality. They stand as monuments to bare existence, dedicated to growth. Feet in the dirt, looking for the light, we are all, to some extent, planted here.

We share some similarities in design with trees, our basic physical structure of trunk and limbs and our interior landscape of branching blood vessels. I play with these likenesses in raw material and organic form. My work often has a narrative element, hinting at the mythic resonance suggested in tree forms. Some of the paintings describe human-shaped hollows in deadfall trunks, alluding to the Norse creation myth of Ask and Embla. According to the Poetic Edda, Odin drew these first two people from fallen Ash and Elm trunks. I frequently play with the idea of decaying wood bursting with life and being transformed through the narrative process of human imagination. It is a curious life we share with trees, sometimes stricken, always striving.

I work in the woods, drawing inspiration from being immersed in the landscape whilst making studies. Sharing the air. These initial studies are often done in chalk pastel because of the intensity and portability of the medium. The fragility and ephemeral qualities also appeal; chalk paintings can be ruined with a sneeze or a stray sleeve! Some of these studies become finished pieces, some I use to create larger paintings in oil or acrylic. Most of the time I choose to work with acrylic because of its flexibility and fast-drying properties. I work in layered glazes, energetic brushwork and dry over-painting. I tend to use a bent, slightly corroded palette knife to drag and scrape paint, sometimes needles, brush ends and sticks to scratch the surface. Working this way, I try to find a balance between building and revealing colour, coaxing a painting into being. A piece is finished when I feel the raw material has been remade to express something of my experience in the landscape, complete with growth and erosion, infused with the strength and energy of the inspiring trees. Animate and resilient.

I’ve included blog posts written about particular pieces, and I hope these give you some feel for where the work is coming from and how it comes about in specific instances. Your comments are most welcome; please take a card with my contact details or leave your thoughts in the notebook provided.

Thanks for having a look!

Many thanks to the LEC for hosting this exhibition. Please contact the artist with any queries about the work or sales. 

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Visit the website Friday 23 March for more details...

Undressed

There will be more on the website soon, once the actual work is on walls. Virtual Preview:

Friday, 23 March 

Do drop by, have a virtual drink, and leave a link to your work!

Under the Skin

Grove K Howell 2012 Acrylic on Board 40cm x 61cm

     In view of the weather - strangely tired of the ubiquitous grey, lovely as it is - I've been working on a piece based on a study from last spring. There's a wood I frequent that has some clumps of very young trees. I love visiting this little grove because the sinewy trunks are electric and crackling with growth. Still spindly, they are finding their feet. So to speak.
     This piece is not dissimilar to a polarised light micrograph of human skin with hair follicles. (See here at the Science Photo Library, credited to Dr Keith Wheeler.)
     The landscape we live in gets under our skin - but maybe it was always there? Do we recognise design similarities on some level?
     I'm working on another tree portrait now and a winter take on a nearby grove that are both much darker, so this was an interesting sidestep in anticipation of spring, and the world refreshed.

Reflections

Lightly Here K Howell 2012 Acrylic on Paper 36cm x 26cm

      In slick February mud, a crater-basin  collects the rain and grows a flat forest...
       One of the advantages to having an unadopted road nearby is the infinite capacity for puddles. They constantly change shape and colour. Each one contains its own shifting microcosm, a small reflection of the surrounding world.
     Trees don't move around much, being rooted in the earth the way they are. But they can turn up in unusual places.
     Puddles are transporting! Even without wellies.

Clarity

Limber K Howell 2011 Pastel on Paper 14 cm x 21 cm

  
Mornings have been foggy. Very atmospheric. Quite conducive to contemplating the yogic exercises of trees.
    
I love the rich reduction of autumn. A new clarity in the bare trees. Crisp line and hanging mist. The sharp smell and cold air preparing the way for winter.
   
 Don Paterson, in his Book of Shadows, says:

     The trees in winter, those exact diagrams of all our dead yearnings.

   
It's a terrible thing to be distracted from work by an aphorism.
   

Metamorphoses

Metamorphoses K Howell 2011 Pastel on Paper 28 cm x 28 cm

     The cold is descending slowly. Perfect weather to visit the beech. This is one of my favourite trees. Depending on the direction of approach, it has many aspects,  its identity constantly shifting. Today, this tree scuttles. As though it has woken up, found itself lying prone, and is trying to work out how to mobilise itself.
     The closely-grained, smooth surface of beech wood used to be made into tablets for writing surfaces. Old English bōc and Old Norse bók both have a primary meaning of beech and a secondary meaning of book, and this is the source of our modern word book.
     Sitting on a load of beechmast, I try to forget about writing, but you see, I've come to the wrong place...

Shadows

 Birch Outstripped by Shadows K Howell 2011 Pastel on Paper 28 cm x 28 cm

     I like shadows. They are rich and full of mystery. Often, they are extreme; a dense pool of dark at your feet, an elongated exaggeration of your height, stretching effortlessly over uneven ground. In a wood, the patterns become entrancing. Actual trees and shadow trees connect and overlap in fascinating rhythms.
     Shadows are the places light doesn't reach. Obviously. They give the world definition. An intriguing wealth of colour goes into the illusion of their solidity.
     When I was small, I developed an obsession with the word penumbra, which is harder than you might imagine to use in conversation. But the sound of it was (and still is) magical. Almost shadow. A word that is evasive, vague, yet exact. I had to make do with umbrella, and translate it in my head as an epithet. Shadow-maker.
     It seems the right time of year to wax effusive about shadows. For the Impressionists, it was all about painting light. Today, I chase shadows.

Lingering Disquiet

Mal'arbre K Howell 2011 Pastel on Paper 21 cm x 14 cm

     There are some trees that are unsettling. They catch at your peripheral vision and pull you into a fairy tale moment. I love these trees. When you turn away, they move. I'm sure they do. And then they are completely still when you stop and take proper notice of them. At least, that's what I tell the small people. Do I truly believe it? When I'm painting, I do. Every tree has character and a story to tell. Some are a little more frightening than others. Those trees have seen some things happen.
     There's a voluble stream feeding into the larger river near this tree. I used to avoid this area of the copse because none of my senses seem to be working properly, when in fact they are working overtime.
      As the White Queen says to Alice, Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
      It takes practice.

Inhabiting Space

Bent Birch K Howell Pastel on Paper 21 cm x 14 cm

Watching the trees grow doesn't sound like a mind-blowing experience, but it is fascinating to see how trees inhabit their space. There's a rhythm to a forest, and all sorts of intriguing shapes, solitary in company.
In a forest, the space between the trees comes alive as well, creating a dynamic interplay between positive and negative shapes. Check out Emily Carr's Old Tree At Dusk. It's an amazing piece of work, and just looking at it makes me wonder why I'm typing and not painting. According to Ms. Sharyn Rohlfsen Udall, author of Carr, O`Keeffe, Kahlo: Places of Their Own, "Carr's trees form the thematic and formal scaffolding upon which her whole oeuvre was constructed."

Which is entirely understandable, when you consider the wealth of inspiration waiting in a forest full of creature-ly trees.

About Inspiration

                                                               Ask and Embla
In an empty world, three gods wander along a beach, in search of amusement. The way gods do. Not much happening; they check out the detritus on the shore. And this is where it gets interesting. Washed up on the shore are a couple of logs.
   Sense they had not, soul they had not
being nor bearing, nor blooming hue.
You know the sort of thing, driftwood. Trees that had been growing, and one way or another, are uprooted and thrown on the waves. They are probably shaped by their time in the water. One log is ash; one is elm. Odin looks at them and, together with his brothers Vili and Ve, gets creative. He breathes into them and the first people step forth.
Ask and Embla.
I like the idea of something dead being reinvigorated. It seems to be the way the world works; in seasons of waste and renewal. The tree in this image has been eviscerated by the weather, and its slow erosion is underway. Certainly it's in a forest, not on a shore, and I have no god delusions. But with paint, you can breathe a little life into a log. Inspiration, of a sort.
 Next post follows logically: Landscape and the body...