Since the early days of the Melbourne-based ROAR Studios, artist Ann Howie has remained committed to an intuitive, process-led approach to image-making. Her practice continues to investigate the layered nuances of composition, where colour, form, and texture accumulate over time. Landscapes and still lives take shape through this methodical yet expressive process, often following the quiet logic of patchwork quilts—fragmented fields of surface and gesture that gradually resolve into a unified whole.
This new curated collection brings together significant paintings that reflect this enduring sensibility, showcasing Howie’s ability to hold tension between abstraction and figuration, spontaneity and structure. Each painting becomes a meditation on memory and the act of looking—revealing a practice deeply attuned to the subtleties of place and perception.
Explore all the works here.
How would you define your creative process?
The creative process can be urgent like a compulsion, or when ideas are less formed or evolved, more like wandering, exploring and being playful. In the studio, I will look at drawings, photographs or previous works to make a new work or bring in an idea that may have been developing for some time. So, flipping through action and reflection, and reflection and action.
I have many notebooks and sketch books on the go, and these reacquaint me with ideas. I might consider how one medium, say a line drawing can translate into another medium such as, paint or, that a cartoon needs its best kept in that format. I often work on a painting over a series of sessions, often using oils, so the medium and their drying times can determine when to finish a session and wrap up.
My current practice focuses on the landscape, which as a subject matter is a medley of memory, observation and notation, referencing photographs, and employing imaginative inventions. Using a limited pallet helps knit various patterns and textures together. I have a growing interest in patterns and balance, collage aspects, disrupted and distributed viewpoints, through which I aim to achieve a semblance of concordance. I can return to a piece later when the initial painting hits a dead end and I cannot resolve it; time helps to see fresh possibilities.
What was it like to be at the forefront of the ROAR Studios movement, and how has that experience shaped or influenced your practice today?
Ambition and opportunity in the late 1970s and early ‘80s characterised a remarkable time in Melbourne. The intention to create a high-quality artist-run space where artists could administer their own art was a clarion call to many recent graduates from art schools across Melbourne. There were a limited number of commercial galleries and very little community or collective spaces. We had good fortune, community and energy, and there was great belief and optimism. ROAR Studios was challenging and energetic and resulted in opportunities and connections. It was a tumult of artistic ideas with a strong focus placed within the broad church of expressionism. It was about developing a practice and taking oneself seriously at a young age, and the idea that you can take risks in painting and the authentic expression was highly valued. This is something that has stayed with me.
What is it about the Australian coastline that draws you in as a subject?
Thematically I see it as a seductive invitation, speaking to personal memories and an approximate, undefined time; both sea and coastlines point towards escape, vastness and removal from the urban. I enjoy the verges, the dunes, and the approach to the waterline, the track to the beach and all its expectations, where one can get lost and not know if it’s the desert or sea. So, it’s about wandering, loss, celebration of the familiar and unease. The coastline offers textures and random topography, both monotony and points of interest. It’s evocative and familiar to many, and a space where I can blend the abstract with the known.
You occasionally engage with figuration in your practice—what motivates that shift?
For two exhibitions I painted a series of playground images dotted with people when my children were small, and later a series of bathers that were stylised, fattened, geometric gridded compositions. The figure has always been part of my practice, in urban themes, cyclists, commission flats, or interiors; similarly I have always painted still life. I often sketch people and undertake some life drawing. So painting figures is more than occasional. Maybe my current preoccupation with abstracting and stretching the interpretation of landscape may seem to dominate, but I have always liked using the figure.
Anne Howie 'Untitled - Three Capes Track
You have mentioned that you paint en plein air during your hikes—do these studies often evolve into larger, more refined works back in the studio?
Often you don’t know what you have until you return to the studio and see it again. These studies present fragments that document the experience and the attitude, or approach, of the excursion. As it’s a bit of a set up. Sometimes the results can be very successful, left as they are, and the freshness works. Other times they are usable fragments, or at worst a smudged mess! Observations and working outside loosen the conceptual grip as it is a 360° experience and difficult to compact into a little rectangle of white board or paper. There is wind, insects, sun and onlookers. But the practice brings the day back into the studio, a somatic experience is recalled, re-experienced, that then informs the gestures made in studio painting.
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