Rachel Howard: the artist you need to know about
Why have I never heard of Rachel Howard? Is what I thought earlier this year when a gorgeous painting caught my eye as I walked past Blain Southern’s London gallery. Curious, I did a sharp right turn and headed straight in. Where I discovered that the under-the-radar, 49-year-old artist has another larger exhibition opening this week at the stunning Newport Street Gallery. Subsequent research tells me that Howard grew up on a farm in County Durham, graduated from Goldsmith’s in the 1990s and assisted Brit Artist Damien Hirst in the early days. She also had four children in her twenties and recently explained her faff-free approach to inews, ‘I never fanny around in my studio: I’m a doer. When I went into my studio I was an artist – when I went into my front door I was a mother. That’s been my rule pretty much for the last 22 years.’
Rachel Howard’s work has a lovely smudgy, worn quality – the black painted grids and lines and disintegrated layers make her paintings look like old textiles or wallpaper. And Newport Street Gallery is just down the road, so I know what I’ll be doing this weekend.
Rachel Howard: Der Kuss is on at Blain Southern until 17 March 2018 and Rachel Howard: Repetition is Truth is on at Newport Street Gallery until 28 May 2018.
And there’s a video interview with Rachel Howard (and Will Self) HERE.
Thank you for this Alyson. A fabulous female artist of my age group AND Will Self (a favourite writer of mine). The large photo looks like a particularly well worn, white painted floor to me. One that has endured years of knocks, dogs, dropped cast iron cooking pans and life.
I’m spending a lot of time in a metal-bashing studio at present, and I’m completely in love with texture. So good to see this kind of art on a style blog.
I’m a Manchester Poly alumnus too, I like to think it really enlightened me in terms of art, design and culture generally. As a proud working class East End girl, it breaks my heart that Arts education is underfunded, and that poor kids are now so hampered by student debt.
Culture posts like these are also what makes your blog so special 🙂