John Howard
As an internationally recognized artist, John works primarily in rock poster art, his hard style frequently coined as “Hard Edge Psychedelia”.
This feature show at Peoples Art of Portland Gallery is his first retrospective in his long career as an artist. John was born in Kentucky of railroad stock, grew up on a farm, and studied painting at a local University before dropping out and relocating to Northern California and a life of crime.
John's poster work springs from the music that it is about. It is his intention to illustrate the music: The way it sounds, where it comes from, and what it is about. If you are a fan of the music, he hopes the work surprises you and at the same time feels like a perfect fit.
In His Own Words, Artist John Howard :
I don't really know how to talk about myself as an artist very well. I feel like I make art in a secret laboratory down long narrow stairs in a cave somewhere. It's very serious, even the funny parts. And I carve and carve, digging out something they could never understand, but that we know. We know it like running through the fields at night full speed and then diving into the thick grass and rolling and rolling into a slump of arms and legs howling.
And there is nothing on earth that is more real and nothing more inexplicable. It has nothing to do with trying to teach anyone anything. But look what we have found! Look how things fit together in different ways! Look how it's different than what everybody thinks. Look it's magical! I hope you don't mind I say we instead of me. I feel like we are part of a gang or movement or generation that is somehow in tune to
something beyond the usual. I have always felt like this. So you and me, we just keep kicking a#@, ripping down the normal and make magic out of the scraps. Thanks for coming with :)
Most all the work here is screen printed. My main focus is drawing directly, ink on paper, where I can let ideas flow and allow for concepts to emerge from the process. Then these are combined and cultivated into compositions that often include the very first drawings created, long before the final concept was yet evident. I then create color separations so that the art can be successfully screen printed, most often in signed/numbered editions of one to three hundred.
Exhibits
