About

BIOGRAPHY

Charles Howard has worked as a professional theatre designer, decorative and architectural painter, and fine artist.

He has painted large decorative images to be viewed communally as well as smaller images to be contemplated individually.

The immediacy of images achieved with the use of acrylic medium with which he works, suits his get it done now personality.

Examples of his work have been published in national media. He has worked at venues in the United States and in Europe.

His work is currently being shown at the McGannon Showrooms in the Dallas Design District.

If after viewing his portfolio you might like to have Charles create a painting for you, please contact him by going to the CONTACT page on this website. 

ARTIST STATEMENT

I paint.

Images.

Others view them.

What do they see?

An image that they might, if asked to name it, call a teapot? Or not a teapot, but an arrangement of color or line or shape? Whistler’s mother. Is appearance reality? What influences our perception of the reality of what we experience? In a world of constant mutability these are essential questions to be asked. I offer clues using the medium of paint to answer them. For myself. For the viewer. That is my job as an artist. I fill the banal emptiness of the surface with an exciting image of life.

When I create each image, I hope

to confront the viewer with a different reality

to open a path to a new way of seeing.

to make them say AHA!

I seek to create images that are decorative, beautiful, and profound. They may be perceived as real or abstract depending on the life experience of the viewer.

The support for the painting, a canvas, a panel, a brick wall, is a void. It is brought to life when an image is arranged on the surface with paint. A world is created. The image becomes a road map. It can be perceived as apparent realism or apparent abstraction depending on where one turns the corner.  Change of point of view, elements of scale, light, shadow, color, chance, context, structure. These things can alter our perception about the reality of the image presented. When viewing my paintings, the viewer is offered a chance to transcend everyday references about reality that he or she might hold. It is a ticket on a flight to an unexplored world.

Quantum physics, Tibetan Buddhism, funhouse mirrors all question what we perceive as real in time and space. I wrestle with these existential conundrums when I paint.

I seek to

Fool the eye.

Fool the brain.

I seek to

Suspend the viewer in the beauty of the moment.

Maybe trompe l’oeil is abstraction?