Ghislaine Howard: Artist Feature
It is my pleasure to introduce our first featured Artist, acclaimed painter Ghislaine Howard. Working from her studio in Glossop, Derbyshire, which includes her gallery, Ghislaine explores challenging, important and personal themes with her expressive paint work capturing the human body, movement, and current affairs.
Ghislaine Howard is a painter of national reputation whose paintings, drawings and prints deal with our shared human experience. Her powerful and compelling figurative works include the series 'Stations of the Cross: The Captive Figure', which were created in association with Amnesty International. The fourteen monumental canvases have toured cathedrals since 2000 and were for the past two years displayed at York Minster. Ghislaine was named ‘Woman of The Year 2008’ for her contribution to art and society. Her works appear in major public collections including The Royal Collection, and she has exhibited widely at many prestigious venues including Manchester Art Gallery, Canterbury Cathedral, St Paul’s Cathedral and Imperial War Museum North.
'The Lamentation of the Women of Jerusalem' - From 'Stations of the Cross: The Captive Figure' series created with Amnesty International.
Ghislaine tells us more about her work and creative practice:
The 365 Series:
Since 2006, I have sustained a practice of making daily paintings based upon a single news media image. Each one measures 6 x 8 inches and results from a daily meditation on one news image, usually from The Guardian.
I have often done this in an irregular fashion, but after being involved in a minor way with the events in London of 7/7 I have regularised this practise. The impulse to make them is deeply rooted in my work as a whole but these modestly sized paintings, each small enough to hold in my hand, have grown from an increasing sense of desperation at recent events and a need to address the disposability of the terrible but often so beautiful and ambiguous images that arrive through the door each day.
Originally I thought that I would work on the project for a year - but now I see no reason to stop. In 2009, 365 of these panels were shown at Imperial War Museum North and 365 have just been exhibited at York Minster alongside The Stations of the Cross / The Captive Figure.
The small daily paintings have now become the raw material for my new work based around ‘The Seven Works of Mercy’.
The Choreography of Walking:
In October 2009, I began an informal working relationship with the Podiatry Department at Salford University. I had already embarked on a body of work concerned with the universal human activity of walking provisionally titled 'Seven Ages: The Walking Figure.'
My purpose in first approaching the Podiatry Department was to underpin this work with a study of the mechanics of walking, starting in the anatomy department with students and making studies in the Gait Measuring Laboratory where computer generated images and video footage are used to analyse every aspect of each individual patient’s gait.
I found this area to be utterly compelling. Most of the individuals that I worked with were children with cerebral palsy. I made drawings as they were examined by the physiotherapist and then as they walked repeatedly between two fixed points in the Gait Measuring laboratory.
I was drawn to the extraordinary choreography of these short journeys, the courage of each child and the support of their families. The drawings also chart an exciting interaction between the oldest of technologies – making marks on paper or canvas with pigment, and the latest computer generated data and imagery.
The results of my time in the Gait Measuring laboratory led to an exhibition at Salford University’s Chapman Gallery in March 2011.
My studies of the human figure in movement continue to explore the particularities of individual modes of walking. These can be seen in a variety of works, some of unknown passers-by but in particular, a sequence charting my mother’s fight to overcome the effects of Parkinson’s Disease and her very distinctive way of walking.
Seven Works of Mercy:
On a New Year visit to Madrid I was moved by a series of small early Renaissance paintings relating to idea of The Seven Works of Mercy. These works deal with actions that are central to any humane and caring society and are at the heart of all the world’s major religions.
The precepts are:
To feed the hungry
To give drink to the thirsty
To shelter the homeless
To clothe the naked
To visit and ransom the prisoners
To visit the sick
To bury the dead
I realised that the absence or presence of these ideas had been the guiding principle behind my '365 Series', so I began to seek out contemporary images relating to these ideas in a more direct way.
From these studies I am developing a major project, using both photographic imagery and direct encounter as the catalyst for the creation of seven major paintings relating to this powerful and universal theme.
Nourished by the past-looking to the future:
I maintain an ongoing dialogue with a number of great artists whose work inspires and encourages me. I am particularly drawn to painterly painters whose works demonstrate what Paul Klee called ‘The dark joy of living’ - what we share as human beings- our capacity to inflict suffering as well as our vulnerability, compassion and tenderness. I have recently been working on studies of Goya’s Disasters of War and have been astonished by their continued relevance to the contemporary world.
Materials used:
I work in a variety of media but for me, oil paint is without parallel in its richness, texture and physicality. I have recently restocked my Michael Harding Oil Paints from Blyth’s. They are high in pigment and the colours are intense. The pleasure of bringing home new tubes of oil paint reminds me of Matisse, whose Mother brought him a tin of paints when he was ill in hospital. It was on opening the box that he realised he had to be a painter. He said - 'I felt as if the doors of paradise had opened before me'.
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I would like to thank Ghislaine for being our first featured artist, and for taking the time to tell us more about her moving, expressive and compelling work.
To find out more about Ghislaine's work:
Visit her Website here: www.ghislainehoward.com
You can also follow her on her Blog: ghislainehoward.blogspot.com
And get all her latest updates on Twitter: @ghislainehoward
Ghislaine also shows her work in the following galleries:
The Ghislaine Howard Studio Gallery
Wendy Levy Contemporary Art Didsbury
The Gateway Gallery Macclesfield
The Cynthia Corbett Gallery London
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