Sin Paintings
Howard’s ‘’Sin Paintings’’ comprise seven monumental canvases, each painted in a range of intensely saturated reds, offset by the use of bright yellow and orange. The paintings were exhibited in a solo exhibition entitled ‘‘Guilty’’, at the Bohen Foundation, New York in 2003. The paintings have a glossy, mirror-shine surface, through which a simple cruciform shape emerges. They do differ from one another; ‘‘Pride’’ is an offering of brilliant red down-strokes, with a cross discernible in its centre; the reds of ‘’Envy’’ are more individuated, with yellows breaking through here and there, and the cross far less readable; the hues of ‘’Anger’’ are in a darker, more brooding range.
Although the religious element seems obvious within these works, and the series certainly engages with issues relating to religion or morality, Howard herself has confessed that the title ‘Guilty’ in part refers to the guilty pleasure of painting.
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Famous quotes containing the words sin and/or paintings:
“People of substance may sin without being exposed for their stolen pleasure; but servants and the poorer sort of women have seldom an opportunity of concealing a big belly, or at least the consequences of it.”
—Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733)
“The invention of photography provided a radically new picture-making process—a process based not on synthesis but on selection. The difference was a basic one. Paintings were made—constructed from a storehouse of traditional schemes and skills and attitudes—but photographs, as the man on the street put, were taken.”
—Jean Szarkowski (b. 1925)