*1935, Kansas City, MO (US) – †2014, New York City, NY (US)
About the works: I have been painting since 1962. My paintings became reductive by degrees to the point that since 1993 I have been concerned with gradations of a particular gray. In preparing a group of paintings, each painting‘s gradation is lightest at the top of the canvas and falls to shadow as it moves downward. Works on paper include limits i.e., the top and bottom of each painting. The studies that I make educe how the divisions will move – change. To make the gradation I establish mathematical curves. I work with differential equations and free form curves. The curves arrange the movement in the painted fields. For paintings I first equalize the paint‘s viscosity then I weigh the paint mixtures. This time consuming process smoothes and softens the movement within the paintings to accommodate lightness. Some of my works on paper are post painting deconstructs reviewing the movement within the field boundaries and the progression steps. One chromatic presence expresses a chatoyant quality that I seek in each work. Every step along the way is documented. [s10], Series Ten, initiated in 1996 now has over 500 paintings and works on paper.
James Howell, New York City, NY (US), October 11, 2013
On foggy days, he often went to the shoreline to gaze toward the diffused horizon and occasionally turned his attention to photographing the atmosphere’s ambient translucence.
Photographs such as these [a photograph James Howell took toward the ocean horizon in Montauk, NY, in 1994] serve as a good way to introduce the Series 10 paintings, as Howell was fascinated by the perceptual effects of fog and mist. He admired vistas that appear homogenized and undifferentiated, where natural light is thin and obscured. On his travels, he often tried to capture these subleties: he would turn his back on the conventionally beautiful sunset, preferring to contemplate the close tonal values of a fading eastern horizon. „Limits reveal freedom and endless opportunity,“ he wrote in 2000. „I remember the first time I had this thought. I was looking at a scene of snow and fog. The view was simplified and the details were erased. Yet I experienced the whole richness.“
Extract from: Alistair Rider, James Howell: Infinite Array, in: James Howell, Circa Press, London 2021, S. 11-81.