Looking at Leverett: How Howe Sees His Surroundings

GALLERY

John Howe

at the leverett house dining Hall

through February

John Howe is the resident Leverett House arts tutor and a special education teacher at a school in the area, but, he says, "In my heart, I am a painter," This month, Leverett students (and any others who make the worthwhile trip to see the show) have an opportunity to see Howe's work.

Howe paints his immediate environment, be it the Vermont landscape of his hometown, the buildings around his old Somerville apartment or Leverett House, where he and his wife Mary Lou (an English Tutor) are spending the year. Howe doesn't "seek out idyllic beauty," but uses his painting to explore his surroundings. "Tutor's Apartment" is just that--a glimpse into the rooms where Howe lives and paints.

Howe speaks about his materials, subjects and studio time with a certain humility, recounting how in his college days he painted on cardboard because he couldn't afford canvas, or calling one of his sketchier pieces a "naptime painting" because he created it when his toddler was a sleep. Although Howe is not a professional artist and has a different full-time career, he considers himself a very serious painter. This admirable dedication and unique painterly vision shines through in his work.

Most of the paintings in the show's 20-odd pieces depict buildings, although there are a few figural works and interior scenes. The pieces are all relatively small; while some of the bigger ones are more worked, the smallest are quick sketches in paint. Howe's plans for his next pieces include bigger canvases and more portraits.

Howe's reason for painting representationally is twofold: first, he depicts his environment for pure convenience--a scene he sees out his window in the Leverett towers is readily accessible. Also, when he describes his cityscape, "Church Street Backyards," he points out the almost tangible but still airy atmosphere between the houses in the paintings: "It feels really good, to feel illusionality. It's one of the most beautiful things about the creative process. That's less true about abstraction--like Picasso, I need a subject."

Although he is a representational painter (he cites Edward Hopper as an influence), Howe's work is not photographic. A more expressionistic canvas, "Attic Apartment" shows a tall figure standing in a small room defined by sharply slanted ceilings. Howe refers to Edvard Munch as an influence for this more psychological piece.

Howe's technique remains fairly constant in all of his works. He paints with acrylics, which he prefers because they respond well to re-working: "Watercolor is like a typewriter; acrylic is like a word-processor." He starts each piece with a gray underpainting on which he builds layers of brighter color--he doesn't use any pigments straight from the tube, preferring instead to mix subtle tones. His darkest shades are made up of reds, blues, and greens; he never uses black in a painting. Howe's brush strokes are, for the most part, controlled, although in some of his earlier pieces like "Adele's Tea House I," the actual process remains visible: "the painting is still here, not flattened out."

Harvard holds Howe's interest as a subject for painting; besides the fact that it is currently his immediate environment, Howe likes the spaces on campus, noting that there is a lot of room between buildings, unlike the neighborhood in Somerville where he lived before. Also, he likes the buildings themselves. Calling the Leverett Towers "repetitious inverted ice cube trays," he says he likes the way the light falls on them.

Leverett students will find Howe a strong asset, not only because he lets them see their familiar surroundings in a new way--he also runs a drawing group for students. Although they haven't had a month to absorb the paintings while they eat, students from other houses will profit from even a single meal in Leverett's newly aesthetic surroundings.