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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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