Asheville Gallery of Art: Howell Boyd

Her Moon-Juggler Dream
2009, acrylic on stretched canvas, 30" x 24"

Abstract expressionism dominated the visual arts when I was a student, and abstract expressionism is at the core of my adult work, even though the work itself is figurative. My work is strongly influenced by psychoanalysis, and my paintings are about "object relations"—the relationship of depicted objects to one another and my relationship to depicted objects. I am out to make entities in the world rather representations of entities in the world, and a personal goal is to become an authority on my hidden-even-from-myself self. (How else am I to make the work which is mine to make?) Without losing subtlety or depth, I hope to become ever less concealing and ever more revealing. I aim for “individualized” beauty versus “received” beauty—for "beauty" (wholeness, harmony and radiance) in anti-beauty. A work of art should be an eye-opener.

Tree House
2009, acrylic on stretched canvas, 24" x 30"

About the Artist
Howell (Hal) Boyd studied drawing and painting at the University of Nebraska and the University of Mississippi. He earned a baccalaureate degree from Ole Miss, where his teachers included major American sculptor David Smith and painter Jack Tworkov. In the 1980s, he taught marketing for artists in the B.F.A. program of the San Antonio Art Institute, San Antonio, Texas. He is a member and past-president of the Asheville Gallery of Art, Ltd.

Hal's paintings have been exhibited at the Forum Gallery in New York City, the Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, the Minas Gallery in Baltimore, and at venues in North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, and elsewhere. Additional work may be viewed at Hal's website, www.halboyd.com.