Susan Hobbs

How do hummingbirds choose flowers? Ornithological studies are only able to identify certain strategies; having no sense of smell, these intense little birds often feed by sight on routinely followed routes – called trap-lining - while an inquisitive nature and sense of competition will keep them looking for new sources. Howlett’s continued foray into painterly abstraction coalesces in this exhibition with a new body of work that examines abstraction’s continuing potential through ambiguity and choice. Drawing on references from early modernist painters such as Paul Klee, Howlett translates his chosen subjects into paint through the screen of the digital. His geometric abstractions are enacted through varied material approaches—including silverpoint, charcoal, pencil crayon, egg tempera, watercolour, distemper, and oil—and on a range of different substrates. For this exhibition, Howlett returns to working on larger scales—a marked shift from his characteristic intimately-scaled paintings on panel—and installs this new body of work alongside related older work and working drawings in an unconventional display that highlights his working process. His paintings illustrate his “strategies for seeing and doing” and, like flowers, become agents of seduction.