Howard Paine
Howard Paine
Howard Paine is an Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and is the Head of Printmaking. He earned an MFA in Printmaking from Washington University in St. Louis, and a BA in Studio Art and American Studies from Grinnell College. He has been integrating digital imaging and traditional printmaking processes for 25 years. Thematically his work is concerned with ideas of death and memory. He lives and works in Omaha Nebraska with his wife Teresa and dog Truman.
The images for this exhibition are traditional reduction woodcuts. Some are editioned prints and others are unique impressions that vary color and combine blocks juxtaposed from several different images. Thematically the works are concerned with the ideas of mortality, memory, and the physical body that is left at the end of life. I am interested in the shell, what remains after death both physically and as source for memory. The physical body is a part of a process or a cycle, not only in a spiritual sense, but in a biological sense as well. I use botanical forms as proxies for the passing from life to death and the husk that remains. These dead things were still beautiful powerful forms, and as I have collected them over many years I have developed a sort of relationship with them. I observe changes in these botanical forms over a period of months and years, drawing, photographing, and making prints from them again and again, watching them change, decay and transform.
