NYAB Event - Heidi Howard “Portrait & Dream”

Heidi Howard “Portrait & Dream”

Nancy Margolis Gallery

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Nancy Margolis Gallery presents Heidi Howard’s first solo exhibition. A recent graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program, Howard is to present a series of 2014 portraits of close friends, often artists, and family members in the exhibition titled Portrait and Dream.

“I came up with the title Portrait and Dream when I saw Bill Berkson’s poetry [collection] with this title on my nightstand. It felt appropriate to borrow these words. It is similar to the process of making a painting of [a] close friend[] that tries to articulate a resemblance. Reading poems you think you are becoming intimate with the author, but your ideas are abstract, and this mystery creates many places where anything could happen. I like that the words “portrait[“] and [“]dream” [describe the process of making these paintings—thinking about a likeness, making a portrait, dreaming, in order to realize a new image.] – Heidi Howard

Howard’s approach to portrait painting is to first initiate a dialogue with the sitter. Exploring shared feelings, thoughts, and ideas, the artist informed by the interaction is ready to begin. Referencing multiple photos or viewing the subject directly Howard slowly documents with brush, canvas and paint the subject. Integrating memory, literature, art history, and contemporary culture, she deftly paints with loose, lively, gestural brush strokes, full of color, pattern, line, and a figuration, abstract to defined, reminiscent of old masters such as Matisse, Bonnard, Vuillard, Botticelli.
Howard reexamines the concept behind traditional portrait painting: the relationship to the sitter throughout the process, the construction of a single space with imagery and ideas, sometimes text and iconography, and finally the application of paint on the canvas. The core of Howard’s portraits is the collaborative personal flow she has with her subject creating not only an image of the sitter, but a rendering reflecting their close symbiotic relationship.

HEIDI HOWARD received a MFA in 2014 from Columbia University and BA in 2008 from Sarah Lawrence College, and studied in Venice, Florence, Reed College and Yale University. She participated in numerous exhibitions, including the solo exhibition “Painting for Love” at Con Artist Gallery and the group exhibition, “Four from Fourteen” at Nathan A. Bernstein Fine Art in New York City. Howard was one of five featured artists at Nancy Margolis Gallery’s successful booth at MIAMI PROJECT Art Fair during the December 2014 Art Basel. She is the recipient of many awards and residencies, including 2013 Rose Biller Scholarship, 2013 Andrew Fisher Fellowship, 2011 Vermont Studio Center residency, and 2014 Byrdcliffe Artist in Residence.