Publisher's Synopsis
Howard’s new works incorporate dark shapes of hanging female figures that appear to have been poured onto the canvas, all previous brushstrokes dissolved into a perfectly smooth expanse of paint. Embedded in the saturated colours and glossy surfaces that characterize Rachel Howard’s work, the dire figures set up an uneasy tension between the subject matter and the vibrant physicality of colour, surface and layered depth. The accompanying ink drawings, which are dominated by female suicide, also explore what the artist describes as the beauty of tragedy’. As Howard puts it, suicide seems to be one of the last taboos shame and guilt and sin; all the things I love and hate.”