Q + A: Garth William Howells

What is your work about?

My paintings explore memories and feelings about life and experiences. I embed within my work universal feelings like being hopelessly lost and not knowing if you can make it through the day.

How do you start a work?

I need an idea. I can’t work without one. An artwork without concept can come across as empty. So my ideas mostly come from life and day-to-day banalities. I seek to create the experience of an unfolding, intensified and extended moment within a painting, equivalent to some of the heightened recollections we might experience through emotions associated with memory.

What have you been working on recently?

I’ve been exploring new ideas of landscape and working towards the Pilotenkueche residency in Leipzig, Germany. I was meant to start the residency in July this year but due to COVID-19, it has been postponed. My work Google It is the first of a new series exploring the identity and ownership of the Australian landscape.

What themes are evident in your practice?

Although many of my paintings differ in their aesthetic outcome, they’re all part of a broader theme of memory. Depicting the banalities of domesticity, their lack of detail highlights the transience of daily life.