Lucinda Howe

Lucinda ‘Cindy’ Howe was the older of two daughters in a typical fifties family in a mill town in North Carolina. The influences of a rural community influenced her early years and education. Her life of practical applications led her to her first love—mathematics—but always there was the interest in art. These early expressions of her artistic nature were colloquial characteristics of those for a small Southern town—crafts, sewing, collaging. Lucinda Painting The practicality of her rural hometown did not allow the occupational option of “artist”, so creative career paths were not considered serious options. And so the skills of logic were developed and encouraged from an early age.

Cindy’s favorite subject continued to be math, and she was influenced to think beyond the obvious by the book T.C. Mits by Lillian Lieber. Leiber talks about the importance of starting with a hunch, making good assumptions, and working carefully to solve a problem. One can choose any set of basic assumptions as long as they don’t contradict each other. This has been a guiding principle in many areas of her life and it had practical applications in both math and art.

The liberal arts curriculum at Wake Forest University allowed room for some art history and photography courses, but the focus was on academic courses. Cindy graduated with a degree in Math and a teaching certificate in 1977. Eventually through jobs and marriage she came to live in central South Carolina where she has made her home for more than 20 years. After starting to work at an insurance company, Cindy found a practical use for her analytical and problem solving skills in doing actuarial work. But still the need to create remained after many years in a world of facts and numbers. To satisfy this need she turned to gardening and travel. It was her garden that began to stir her interest in color and composition.

Then 10 years ago, Cindy picked up a book on drawing to take along on a vacation to St. Thomas. While she was there, she saw an exhibit of early drawings by Camille Pissarro at his boyhood home in St. Thomas. The experience of seeing the Pissarro exhibit while practicing drawing exercises was the beginning of a renewed interest in art. After returning home, she enrolled in watercolor painting classes and found herself reunited with the world of art. Since then she has painted on location in Hawaii, the Carribean, France, Greece, and many other locations around the USA. Most recently, she visited Santa Fe, Taos, and Ghost Ranch, New Mexico to paint with the Turquiose Eight, a group of artist friends who paint together and share wine, s’mores, and stories around the campfire in the evenings.

Cindy continues to tap the inspiration of gardens, whether they be the barren red rocks of the West or the abundant and colorful local gardens of the South. Her main focus is using color expressively, so she often draws on location to understand shapes, but paints in the studio to tap into emotional reserves for expressive color. And now, the very different parts of Cindy’s life—her Southern gentility, her mathematical logic, her love of gardening, and her passion for painting have come together to produce an eclectic style reminiscent of romanticism with an edge that always provides the viewer with a complexity. The overall softness of brushstrokes is juxtaposed with sharp color or strong edges catching the attention of the eye and drawing the observer back to the canvas.