Catherine Howe: Ultra-Florescent

The suite of work in Ultra – Florescent examines an earthly, fluxing garden through opalescent renderings of flowers bursting into luminous organic matter. Working with an alchemical combination of acrylic mediums and mineral pigments, Howe’s semi-abstracted gauzy paintings interrogate the power of paint as material, or as a radical act of flowering itself. Shimmery backdrops gradated with softly golden hues embolden the central gestures of thickly laid paint, ghostly in their rippling petals and whitish matte glaze.

“Responding in person to the scent and shimmer of a flower bed is a balm and a consolation. But the scene is never merely pretty. As you move closer, it seems in constant flux beneath its canopy of loveliness.

On canvas, the reimagined daisies and tulips, barely held captive by a vase, seem to possess a self-consciousness and transcendental spirit. I am filled with a longing for their beauty and imagine their transcendent capacities as my own.” — Catherine Howe

Born in upstate New York in 1959, Howe received an MFA from SUNY Buffalo in 1983. The many publications that have reviewed her work include Art in America, Artforum, Art Critical, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Times. Howe has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe for over twenty years, including shows at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, MoMA PS 1 in New York, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.