Revolve Gallery

Howard Gardener

Self-taught artist Howard Gardener moved to the North West in 2000, having spent more than fifteen years in the graphic arts industry before retraining in the primary healthcare field. He decided to apply himself full-time to his art in 2008. The majority of his work involves portraiture as he believes that “People are more interesting than bowls of fruit”.  Howard also produces exquisitely detailed still life in the form of paper sculptures. He also works in stained glass.

Background

After many years in the graphics industry and living in the South, I retrained and moved to the North West in the late nineties. The clean lines of graphic design have left an indelible impression on my work – as has the necessity of studying people and anatomy close up. I enjoy the collision of the two opposites – the artist and the scientist continually at odds with each other – and the situations that these collisions invariably provide.

Inspiration

"I am inspired primarily by people and the situations in which they find (or put) themselves. Most of my work therefore has its roots in portraiture of some sort and may be initiated by an expression, a posture or even overhearing a chance remark.

Some years ago I took a course in black and white photography. This too had an enormous effect on my work and forced me to reconsider the whole concept of colour versus form. Much of my work since then has tended to use colour sparingly, rather like the hand tinted photographs which initially inspired them.

My pictures are executed using of thousands of tiny dots drawn with technical drawing pens and then colour – gouache or watercolour – is usually added later on. The technique is a simple one but time-consuming: in this way, the idea remains largely malleable right up to its conclusion. It is unusual for me to have a fixed idea about a subject: people change constantly and I am well aware that by the time a picture is completed, the world has invariably moved on.

My paper sculptures attempt to take this idea of form a step further. I am particularly interested in the point at which 2D becomes 3D. Once again, the work is primarily executed in monochrome, with an occasional detail picked out in colour. More recent work in this area has been freestanding, having finally outgrown the constraints of a frame."

To Paper

"I spend a long time in preparation. One idea will be replaced by another and then refined, until the finished design emerges. Although the person is usually the most visual element, it is important for the rest of the picture to provide an appropriate context.  The drawing method that I use, because it is so time consuming, allows me ample time to change the piece as I go along."