A lazy Saturday morning... and what a pleasure to find myself wandering into the garden of artists Howard and Gretchen... hidden from the world, burgeoning with plants... and the sound of gently trickling water... The house and 2 studios are arranged around a shaded courtyard and it is here that they both live, work and find refuge from 21st century living. One feels that one has entered a timeless space where different rules apply: those of the human, animal and plant kingdoms, but not of clockwork or machinery. This feeling emits as much from the personalities of the artists themselves, as it does from the space they have created, and reflects in their art in various ways.
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| Summer Painting 1, 1992. Gretchen. |
The Voyage Out #2, 2009. Howard. |
Gretchen first came to Ibiza in 1954, and Howard in 1962. Gretchen recollects that: “In the 50's, most of the roads, even the major ones, were just dirt tracks... In the summer a man would walk down the main street in Santa Eulalia with a donkey, sprinkling water to keep the dust down. There were just 3 taxis in the town, and almost no-one had a car”. There were also no street lights and for a long time no electricity in the houses. She remembers the day in 1958 when Santa Eulalia got “lit up” and people had lights in their houses from 7-10pm. Exciting though this was for many residents, it was an unwelcome sign to Gretchen, for whom the lack of electricity had meant a deeper connection with nature – in fact she almost left the island twice in the 50's thinking it had been ruined. She longed for a complete contrast to America, where she still needed to work for part of the year, teaching and exhibiting, in order to facilitate the long
periods of escape which fed her creative spirit.
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| Invernadero #1, 1996. Gretchen. |
Green Kohlrabi, 1999. Gretchen. |
But, like many others before and since, she came to realise that Ibiza has a magic that can't easily be taken away. Saddened though she has been by the spiralling building, and the increase in traffic and pollution, she has maintained her love for the island, and appreciates that it still has much beauty. Her art is fundamentally inspired by nature and by her immediate surroundings – the subject might be as simple as vegetables on the kitchen table, but she has a knack of bringing alive, through colour and form, the ordinary, and elevating it to the status of a meditative object. For Gretchen painting is part inspiration, part addiction and she freely admits, something she does to escape what might otherwise be “the monotony of life”. She quotes Anton Chekhov who said 'Any idiot can face a crisis – it's this day to day living that wears us out'.
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| Drawing of German Model, 2009. Howard. |
The Spanish Studio Series #5, 2005. Howard. |
Howard and Gretchen approach their art in fundamentally different ways: Gretchen rarely starts with a fixed idea – usually, she just waits to see what emerges. Howard, on the other hand is a narrative artist, particularly interested in exploring aspects of the hero/fool archetypes. He starts with a vague feeling or idea and does scores of pen sketches. He then chooses one and paints it directly, making only minor changes from the original drawing. His paintings contain many elements from the natural world. They also portray a cast of characters from the imagination. Titles include 'Hunting the Wild Nuse' and 'Death of Romanticism'. He taught for over 20 years at the University of Iowa and also enjoyed working with young people at the Kansas City Art Institute. Howard's attitude to art is very much like that of one of his masters Frederico Fellini who once said “Art is a combination of pasta and memory”.
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| Good Friday - Ibiza, 2001. Howard. |
Power Plant, 1997. Gretchen. |
The couple lives part of the year in Iowa City, they travel extensively, and have exhibited in New York, Chicago, Iowa City and Ibiza. Howard and Gretchen have each found ways to maintain their creativity through more than half a century of changes. Some of these changes they have accepted, some they choose not to – for example, neither of them have a mobile phone or internet connection, not do they want these things. Yet somehow they are still connected with themselves, with life, with others, and I am reminded dimly of a time when it still seemed possible to pick up answerphone messages at the end of the day, and to reply at leisure... How refreshing it is to meet people who do not feel they have to hurl themselves into the “machine”, and who remain inspired, but not driven. •
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| Summer Painting Ibiza, 2003. Howard. |
Studio
(Photo:
Melba Levick) |
Text: Helen Howard
