The Tower Gallery in Crickhowell is rapidly building a reputation for showing exciting, first rate Welsh Art. The latest exhibition from this local Art Co-operative is a one person show featuring Michael Howard; a Brecon artist who seems obsessed with the hills and fields that surround his home in Trallong.
His colourful landscapes in oil are full of energy and vitality that display a confidence born of a lifetime of making art. Michael Howard taught Art for twenty years and since leaving his last post as Head of Art at Rugby School in 2011 he has been walking the Brecon hills with pencil and brush in hand. His painting focuses on the the traces, echoes and presence of human activity that shape and define the hills and mountains that surround his home near Brecon.
Michael says that they reflect a point where observation, memory, experience and imagination converge. They are topographically faithful, but they are much more about his mood, the speed of gesture, the application of materials, colour selection, confident mark making and the ever present struggle to resolve visual issues, In short they are about pure painting.
Michael Howard’s exhibition of landscape paintings can be seen from: 5th July until 2nd September, Wednesday – Saturday. 10am – 5pm at The Tower Gallery, 49 High Street, Crickhowell. NP8 1BH. Tel: 01873812495.www.towergallery.co.uk
Michael Howard
