Dan Howard exhibitions showcase his drawings, new paintings

Dan Howard has long been one of Lincoln's top painters -- an artist who for more than five decades has explored line and abstraction, realism and color, in distinctive, dynamic works.

This summer, Howard has a pair of simultaneous Lincoln exhibitions along with one yet to open in Omaha.

"Decisive Line: Drawings by Dan Howard" at the Sheldon Museum of Art showcases 17 works on paper and monochromatic oil paintings that Howard considers to be as much drawing as painting.

"Dan Howard: New Paintings 2008-2011" at Kiechel Fine Art is composed of 34 pieces that Howard has completed since his last exhibition in 2007, including an impressive 2011 series of biomorphic abstractions titled "By the Numbers."

The two exhibitions are complementary in multiple ways, each informing the other to provide insight into Howard's vision and artistic process.

For example, the graphite drawings and monochromatic oil of the "Colorado Postcard" series at Sheldon are linked to a pair of color paintings from the same grouping at Kiechel.

In the small sketches, Howard's use of pencil to capture form and detail becomes clear. The large monochromatic oil demonstrates his mastery of shape and rhythm and his use of material, which includes throwing turpentine on the painted canvas to create drips that easily link Howard's work to abstract expressionism.

The paintings, however, also are realist, as the Kiechel works show with weeds popping up on one of the images and letters from "Colorado" on the edges of the canvases.

The Sheldon exhibition features works in graphite, charcoal, pen and ink and oil. Each medium stands out in and of itself with Howard's hand and technique intentionally apparent.

"I use media as I think it is intended to be used," Howard said. "My charcoal drawings I want to have a charcoal look. I don't want it to look like anything else."

So the tooth of the paper can be seen through a light charcoal field in "Abstract Drawing Two," as can eraser marks, heavy layering and lines both solid and strong and light and variable contributing to the shapes that were based on a Robert Capa photo.

The Kiechel show finds a painter exploring color and abstraction. That is particularly true in the "Color Quartet" series, which takes abstract drawings, then turns them into single color paintings, a study in mauves, oranges, browns and, most strikingly, greens. That also holds true for the "By the Numbers" series, which uses the single color technique and incorporates each of the digits, often hiding them in the swirls and curves of the deftly handled paint.

Howard will turn 80 in August, and while neither show is retrospective, he revisits series he has created in more than 50 years of painting and drawing.

That includes the explosive "Out of this World: The Sequel," a link to his last series of paintings based on astronomic observations; "Ramblin' Wreck," an abstract expressionist take on a wrecked car that dates back to a 1960s series; and the dynamic "Variazone de Caravaggio: Finale," a piece that Howard claims is his final exploration of pieces of paintings by Italian master Caravaggio, who I know didn't include a slash of bright green through the darkness in the original.

Howard is primarily an abstract artist who incorporates realistic elements, such as buildings, rocks and landscapes, in his paintings. But figures pop up in the work as well, eye-catchingly so. Three such pieces, two at Kiechel and one at Sheldon, are particularly of note.

With "American Gothic Revisited (Homage to Grant Wood and Jack Levine)," Howard pays tribute to the two painters who influenced him -- Wood, the regionalist from his native Iowa, and satiric social realist Jack Levine, who died last year.

He does so by blowing up the faces from Wood's iconic "American Gothic" then giving them the hydrocephalic heads associated with Levine's work, all painted with dynamic brushwork that adds a looseness and new power to the familiar image.

In "Hail to the Chiefs: Full Throttle," made during the 2008 presidential campaign, Howard combines John Quincy Adams' forehead, Abraham Lincoln's eyes, James Madison's nose, John F. Kennedy's mouth and teeth and Andrew Jackson's chin and costume into a vibrantly colored composite portrait.

The piece at Sheldon ties directly to another of Howard's interests -- comic art. An admirer of comic strip and comic book art from his childhood days, Howard collected originals by the early masters of the work, donating them to Sheldon.

For "My Life: The Comic Strip," Howard made his first pen-and-ink self-portrait, then created a small comic he titled "Artistico," borrowing the byline style from "Dick Tracy" creator Chester Gould and some of the text from Hamlet's soliloquy.

The piece has comic-like panels. But a few lines escape the boxes as Howard puts his twist on the form, continuing to explore line, motion and their ability to visually captivate -- the theme that unifies his continually impressive work, no matter the medium.