Interview with Virginia Howlett, Seattle painter

Virginia Howlett is a Seattle-based painter of “Universal Landscapes” – landscapes which are generated from a very specific place and time but which have broad and comprehensive relevance to anyone that explores them. She’s been looking up at the sky, painting it, and building narratives out of it, for years. She graciously invited us into her studio to talk to her about her work and grab some photos, just after it got dark outside, naturally.
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Hi Virginia, thanks for taking the time to talk to me about your work. You’re known primarily as a landscape painter but you generally paint a very specific type of landscape. Can you tell The Puget News readers about what you paint and why?

I paint skies and abstracted landscapes – both individual paintings and large installation pieces made up of multiple panels. My work is meditative and peaceful because I’m trying to convey that universal quiet feeling we get looking at the sky, and landscape. Skies are like huge beautiful color fields that are constantly changing – I like to try to capture that gentle feeling of time passing, clouds moving.

How do you go about capturing subject matter that’s so fleeting and transitory?

I paint lots of small watercolor sketches outside, everywhere I go, in the Northwest and on trips abroad. I paint quickly to capture the moment, and do sketch after sketch, as the clouds move, as the light changes. Then I work from these sketches on large pieces of paper in the studio. I can use the exact same pigments – like the same three blues I combined to get a shade in the sky, or the same brilliant orange made from a pink and a yellow. The sketches are also more true to the moment than photographs.

Then I take the big paintings and use them as raw materials for my large installations or collaged landscapes – I cut them up, and re-arrange them. I spend a long time on that – before I glue them down and seal them.

Now that I’ve seen a good deal of the work hanging in your studio, it strikes me that have developed your own entire language of expression through these visual landscapes. How has the in-depth study of your subject matter changed your interactions with the world?

I look at the sky a lot! I also look very keenly at the light, the colors and shapes in the world around me, everyday, all the time. The outside visual environment is a rich source of study for me. But it’s also being tuned to the feelings that come from different kinds of light, different skies, different places. We all know we feel differently under a solid gray sky — the way it makes the light dull, and colors muted, than we do when the sun shines brightly and all the colors around us seem to pop out brilliantly. I like to think about how to translate those feelings into paintings.

I try to capture a universal sense of place, because I’ve found that realist paintings of one place, in one moment, are limited. They don’t have the layers of meaning — I want the viewer to go back and back to the painting and see new things. New shapes, new colors, new feelings.

I guess what I was trying to get at in that last question is whether or not your development of this “landscape language” has impacted the way you personally engage with the world, your friends and family. When you wake up and the sky’s grey, do you feel the day is out to get you? Do you ever have conversations with people about what you’re seeing and have them look at you like they have no idea what you’re talking about?

Well I can tell you one thing that happens over and over again: people who get to know my work tell me something like this: “Last night I saw a really amazing sky and I thought of you – I knew you’d really love that sky.” It’s fun for me — it’s like my work opens something up for people. We all admire a beautiful sunset, but after talking to me about my work, people remember me, and my engagement with skies, and I think they enjoy the moment even more – it becomes a shared experience with me, in a way.

Which of your works has proven to be the most influential on your own development as a painter?

The first painting I did in the “Windows” series – these were the pre-cursor to my big grid installations. It’s called Michael’s Eyes – it took me months and months to do, and I sold it even before it was finished. It started that whole series of work that I’ve been involved with for about 10 years.

These paintings are all made of rectangles of skies – some that go together, some that don’t – that recall window panes, and yet, are something else again. They take me a very long time – to construct the composition. My largest is Ninety-five Windows – it’s 23 feet long, made of 95 panels.

What’s it like to compose the multi-panel pieces? Did you know that you were going to get in 95 panels deep on your largest or was it just something you kept working on until it made the right statement?

Composing the multi-panel pieces is just hard – it takes a very long time, trying out ideas, adjusting, making new pieces for certain spots, moving things around. I do start with an idea, and it flows from there. Ninety-five Windows developed organically – I wanted to fill the wall, and I picked a height, then it evolved left to right, with adjustments along the way. I knew I wanted it to have a narrative, I wanted it to change horizontally, like time passing as you move along it. Seeing Through (which is about 1/3 the size of Ninety-five Windows) was one idea from the start – a sort of looking through to deeper space, with other panels bringing you back to the surface. For me it’s also about water, and the way water reflects the sky.

Who are the local artists that inspire you and what kind of work do they do?

I’m very inspired by several of the artists in my building, Building C Studios — AJ Power, with his ineffable African scenes and animals; also Andree Carter, whose totally abstract works made of color and texture are so strong and vibrant, and Mary Iverson, who does powerful paintings with abstractions of cargo containers and amazing landscapes.

Do you have any shows coming up that you’d like people to know about?

My building — Building C Studios in Ballard — is having a huge Holiday Show and sale on Saturday, December 12th from noon- 9 PM. We’ll have 22 artists with their working studios open to the public, and holiday treats – even a jazz duo in the evening. It’s going to be a lot of fun! And, I’ll be showing my big piece: Ninety-five Windows, as well as lots of smaller work.

Thanks again for meeting with me and allowing access to your studio. It’s been really fun and I appreciate it.

Hey, Eric, it was so great to meet you and have you visit my studio! Thanks so much for coming and asking all these good questions!
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Tagged as: AJ Power, Andrée Carter, Ballard, Mary Iverson, painter, Seattle, Virgina Howlett