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STUCKISM
WOLF HOWARD
(London Stuckists)

BIOG/TEXT

Introduction Biog/text Paintings Large images: 1 2 3 4 5 Photos


Biography

Oxfam shop volunteer one day a week. Spends other days writing poetry, taking pinhole photographs, making Super 8 cine films and painting. Naps in the afternoon. Vegetarian. Cultivates a Victorian beard. Likes "old clocks, old lamps, old suitcases, old typewriters, old furniture."

Born: 7.4.68, Medway, Kent
Education: Rede School, Strood, Kent
Exhibitions:
.London: Rivington Gallery, The Harrodian School, The Arts Club, Gallery 108, Pure Gallery, Stuckism International. Leeds: The Cube. Newcastle: Arts Centre. Kent: Chatham Town Hall. Wednesbury Museum.
Collections: Mr and Mrs Sorrel, Billy Childish

Other activities: Writing, drumming, pinhole photography, making short films on super 8 cine.

Wolf Howard left school at 16 and started playing drums with The Daggermen, a 60's punk trio. He then went on to play in many other bands including: The James Taylor Quartet (their first two years) and The Prime Movers. He is currently drumming with The Solar Flares and The Buff Medways with Billy Childish. Wolf spent over 13 years on the dole. His book 'Journals of a Jobseeker - a collection of poems' was published in 2007. Wolf Howard currently lives in Chatham town and continues to paint in an old sail loft over-looking the River Medway.

Sum total of employment: four months in a warehouse and two days in a butcher's shop. Presently beyond employment.

He started doing art at the age of two, took a break between the ages of fourteen and twenty-six and is now going strong. He considers his report from M.Gomman, art teacher at Rede School to be accurate: "Simon's behaviour is often immature - as a result, not only his art work suffers but often those around him suffer as well."

He said, "My favourite artists are Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Billy Childish and Philip Absolon. Painting to me is about sharing and reaching out to other human beings."

Working method

"I paint with oils, covering the canvas as quickly as I can and sometimes returning to it many times until I feel it is finished. My paintings range from ex pets to world disasters. No subject matter is too pathetic or too important."

"I work from imagination and sketches from life. I draw on the canvas with charcoal before I paint and then try to get the whole thing finished in one go. It's frustrating to have to return to a painting many times before it feels right but I often have to. That's the most important part of growing as an artist and a person. I'll do the whole background before I can look at it and know it's wrong. Then I have to go over it or scrape it off. That can easily happen ten times on some of them."

"Mrs Chippy" painting

"People have said do me, 'What's the point in painting a cat? My five-year-old daughter could do that.' Yes, she could, but would it be a cat that had the look in its eyes that conveyed to you that it was about to be shot? That's the fate that befell Mrs Chippy during one of the greatest survival adventures ever - Ernest Shackleton's voyage to the Antarctic in 1914 on the ship Endurance - shown in the background of the painting , stuck in the ice, as the crew drag the small open boat which later accomplished an 850 mile rescue journey through sixty-foot waves.That's the difference between my cat and a five-year-old's. I also paint cats where there is no difference."

More paintings: superHumanism.com

Poem

my paintings

travelling on the train
in that other lifetime
I hid my head behind
my mothers back
to avoid the harsh stare
of those opposite

now
delivering my paintings
to an exhibition
I clutch them close to my chest
until the last possible second

they are my soft innards
they are where the child
and the adult meet

and each time they are looked at
I miss my mothers back

Links

Wolf Howard web site: www.wolfhoward.com

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