GENERAL BACKGROUND
I live and work in Cairns, Far North Queensland, Australia and my history includes newspaper photographer, international media assistant for a British company in England, TAFE art teacher and head of promotions for The Cairns Post daily newspaper.
But through all of the above, I maintained an art career that included many solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, and my work is in the Queensland Art Gallery, regional galleries and private collections in Australia, Britain and the USA.
2010 – VISIT TO USA
Spent 5 weeks in the USA visiting San Francisco / New York / Chicago / Houston and Santa Fe. Was given a special opportunity to see artwork I was interested in but not on display, at New York’s MOMA.
2009/2011 – CURRENT WORK
Primarily a painter, I am crossing into a form of flat sculpture. This reflects a growing interest in promoting the sensation of energy and movement. The aim is to generate points of tension and integrate these into irregular shaped surfaces – as seen in the following preparatory drawings. They will be cut from industrial aluminium and some surfaces covered with canvas with ‘floating’ areas created by Perspex (clear plastic).
2009 – EDGE SHIFTING
Landscape – Points Of View exhibition: Kick Arts Contemporary Arts, Cairns
Received an invitation to exhibit at Kick Arts Contemporary Arts where the first works appeared with an abstracted perimeter. From these initial paintings, I have developed at least 200 ideas for future works (as at Feb 2011).
2008 – TRANSITION REVEALED
New Directions exhibition, Cairns Regional Gallery, Cairns
This was the first major solo exhibition since 2003 and the images were a dramatic shift from the former Surrealist works, although both artistic directions used symbols to describe personal experiences and observations.
2005 – THE EXPERIENCE OF TRANSITION
England – May/July
During the same 6 months leae-of-absence, my daughter and I were invited to spend 2 months at a renovated 16th century mill in Essex, England.
Here I felt a great sense of freedom and at a very deep level, resonated with the surrounding countryside.
I employed the use of more liquid paint and produced 18 canvases that contained the essence and spirit of the place – they were ‘landscapes’ without being descriptive. I had found a meaninful ‘gap’ I could enter.
2005 – REINVENTION
Bali – Feb/April
The drawings from the previous November had signalled a fresh start, but re-inventing my whole art practice required concentration and a high level of personal trust. To create space for the unknown to reveal itself, I requested a 6 month leave-of-absence from teaching art at TAFE.
It was necessary to bring in new experiences to invigorate mind, body and soul. An external change was integral in forging a different creative path and my daughter and I moved to Bali for 2 months. It proved to be an amazing experience on so many levels and while I painted 1 canvases, I felt the work was just skimming across the surface. It took the next sojourn – a trip to England a month later, to find the link I was intuitively searching for.
2004 – THE FORCE OF ABSTRACTION
Regardless of stylistic trends and the fashionable position of this particular mode or that, I knew for me it was necessary to move from a more realistic form into an ephemeral approach, but had no concept of how that would manifest itself.
During a 3 day intensive burst of energy, I created a series of works on paper, which catapulted me from the creative block I had been experiencing since the 2003 exhibition. It was revitalising and completely transformed my direction to abstraction.
2003 – END OF SURREALISM
Crossroads exhibition: Gallery 101, Melbourne
This exhibition signaled the end of an era as these works were the last to contain recognisable objects, albeit in a symbolic way, to convey social intent. From here a different life required new thinking and then a fresh way of expressing it.
2001
Street Echo exhibition: Gallery 1010, Melbourne
This exhibition was previously held in Cairns (see 2000 below) and then travelled to Melbourne to be in a a joint exhibition with surrealist sculptor, Jon Eismann.
2000
Street Echo exhibition: Cairns Regional Gallery, Cairns
From Gordon Fould’s catalogue essay accompanying the exhibition, “Lenore Howard is a painter of quite remarkable images: powerful, beautiful, sensual, dramatic and challenging. She works in the Surreal genre in which the artist paints thought rather than known reality, creating a bridge to a different kind of existence where logic and reason are displaced.
Narrative is present in these works but is seen in a context of dreamlike discontinuity where unfettered imagination takes over while portraying some of the dysfunctional aspects of the human condition.”
1995
No Piece Of Cake exhibition: Cairns Regional Gallery, Cairns
I developed and organised a major exhibition on behalf of Kick Arts that showcased 15 contemporary women artists who were based in Far North Queensland. It was curated by Lynne Seear (Deputy Director of Queensland Art Gallery).
1994
Europa Visits Her Australian Cousin exhibition: Cairns
A major solo exhibition that encompassed installation, a performance piece, paintings and works on paper. While many of the works were driven by personal content, there were some that had a broader social reference.
1993
The Fish John West Regrets exhibition: Cairns
Invited to participate in the inaugural Kick Arts group exhibition. This was a major contemporary art event in Cairns and brought together many artistswho had been working in isolation.
My sculpture, “Fishing Trip” is now part of the Queensalnd Art Gallery collection.
*earlier exhibitions are not included here