Suicide Paintings
Howard’s ‘’Suicide Paintings’’ were first shown at the Bohen Foundation in New york, 2007, and were later exhibited at Haunch of Venison, London, 2008 The series evolved after an acquaintance of Howard’s committed suicide. He was discovered, not in the imagined drama, ‘swinging from the rafters’, but kneeling in a pose almost of prayer. It was this particular detail that Howard found most disturbing, and which led her to create the series, coupled with the fact that for her, suicide is one of the last taboos. The source material for the paintings came from trawling through forensic magazines and internet sites for pictures of suicides. These were then abstracted from their contexts within Howard’s rapidly executed line drawings, forming the basis of the paintings.
The series ultimately offers an investigation into the aesthetics of suicide. Possible instruments of death are depicted – a pair of scissors, a ladder, as well as the symbolic, lone ‘‘Black Dog’’. Then there are the faceless figures; many hang from ropes, while the body of a woman lying across a bed recalls the psychosexual claustrophobia of Walter Sickert.
“Howard’s figures are on the verge of disappearing completely, dangerously close to ceasing to exist even as an image, slipping away from the canvas’s representation: all that remains is the macabre trace of a body, almost as immaterial as a shadow cast upon an empty room."Sue Hubbard wrote of the series in The Independent:
“The creation of these ambitious canvases is a psychological and physical battle, which demonstrates that there is still a role for emotionally articulate art that has something important to say about the poignancy and tragedy of the human condition."Read more about this topic: Rachel Howard
Famous quotes containing the words suicide and/or paintings:
“However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamour to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“When I began to have a fire at evening, before I plastered my house, the chimney carried smoke particularly well, because of the numerous chinks between the boards.... Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters? These forms are more agreeable to the fancy and imagination than fresco paintings or other the most expensive furniture.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)