Eddie Howard

I predominately use Gouache on board, creating chalky, permeable surfaces into which my watery paint absorbs like paper. I work in series, using archetypal subjects to explore the tradition of European painting. I consider painting as an act of drawing; often from life, sometimes photographs, as in my recent series of FaceTime portraits. The real subject of my work, however, is the act of observation and recording. The finished work becomes a souvenir of the time spent obsessively pursuing colours, an honest record of my exchange with the subject:

I think about making a 1 for 1 translation of the physical world; each blob of paint is a recording of an area of colour I’ve observed. It could be anywhere from 30-500 recordings that make up the entire image. It’s like being a big camera with a very slow exposure, except unlike a camera you also record your behaviours during the making of the painting. I see areas where I have meticulously and obsessively recorded the correct colours, and areas of broader, more hasty brushstrokes.

Flintstone, found on the Sussex coast where I am from, is the subject of my current series of works. 

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