Grace Howl: Contemporary Art Studio:
1348 Central Avenue
Sarasota, FL 34236
Email: gracehowlart@gmail.com
Website: www.gracehowlart.com
Phone: 941.539.5302
Howl’s background was corporate until 2007, when she had a physical experience that changed her life. She awoke a different person, verbalization was difficult, she didn’t recognize her face in the mirror; however, she saw images, forms and colors and visualized the world in a completely new way. For Howl, abstract became her new language; it replaced the concrete, colors replaced words and boundaries. She let go of fear, inhibition and trusted her intuitive spirit to evolve her creative process. Art has allowed Howl to convey her emotions and interpretation of life, her interactions with people and is her way of storytelling.
Howl says: “I’m absorbed in colors, forms, images, and mark making that appear to come out of thin air, into my arms, hands and fingers and flow onto the canvas; I am ‘in the moment’ when creating. I am ‘in a zone’, I call it my ‘no brain state’; ‘I get lost in the flow’. For me, abstraction is the most genuine form of ‘expression’ in art.”
Influencers in her work include Helen Frankenthaler (large color fields); Picasso (variety & freedom); Lee Krasner (painting large and expressive – side note – an image of one of her paintings was compared to Krasner’s work by a recent grad of curatorial practices in her thesis presentation 4/2019 at USF) Matisse (simplicity); Syd Solomon (use of layers, colors and mystery) O’Keeffe (change your perspective).
Howl uses acrylic paints, graphite, sand, texture media, pencils, markers, pens, dye inks, collage and oil stick products when creating in order to achieve results that she believes convey what she wants to express. Howl wants viewers to appreciate the interconnectedness of life and creativity by creating an immersive and intriguing experience, stirring imaginations and evoking an emotional response.
Mark Ormond, Curator/Art Historian wrote: “Grace Howl is centered, inventive and meditative. Her work is ambitious. She says her art is not about perfection. She does not care about mistakes. Howl revels in her process and is confident in the possibilities. Her work reflects this optimism. Howl is the rare artist who trusts her intuition completely. She allows and even encourages the viewer to enter into a conversation with her paintings and return to them again and again always learning something new from the exchange. Her work appears timeless, fluid, suspended.” 2019
Kevin Costello, Art Historian: “The spontaneous rapid gestural strokes of Howl’s art display inexhaustible emotional energy contained by the dimensions of the canvas. She locks in this energy by contrasting volatile line and dramatic figure/ground relationships – thus disguising their narrative visual metaphors as random expressive markings. Howl’s works are bold eclectic confabulations that for the time you stand before them take us back to the personal, universal world of magical thinking.” 2016
Artist Statement: “Abstract art is my state of mind. It is a visual experience and conversation that can be compromised with words. I prefer to let viewers open their minds, hearts and emotions to what they see and feel in my paintings.”
