Howard Post In conversation with Norman Kolpas
NK: What was your path to becoming a professional artist?HP: My third-grade teacher entered one of my drawings in a contest in the Tucson Daily Citizen. I won first prize and got some notoriety, so I figured that must be my calling in life. My mom put me in some private art classes, art became my focus in high school and then I went to the University of Arizona in Tucson, where I earned a BFA and MFA, focusing on illustration and graphic design. I’d been working three years as an art director and designer in Salt Lake when the university offered me a teaching position and we moved back to Arizona. That gave me the time to work on finding my voice and direction. I’ve been a full-time painter since 1980.
NK: Where do you find your inspiration?HP: I grew up on a 30-acre ranch outside of Tucson, and my family did rodeo. But traditional cowboy paintings weren’t really me. I trained in all the contemporary “isms” and painters like Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud and eight or 10 others all influenced me. My university professor Bart Morse told me to go back to my dad’s ranch and rodeo venues I knew and do some really big paintings of stuff I grew up with. When I got up on the chutes and catwalks and grandstands and found the angularity and abstract qualities of the corrals and all the animals crowded together, things kind of clicked. I said to myself, this is what interests me. And it interests me still.
NK: In terms of technique and style, what has changed since the beginning and what do you continue to rely on for your artwork?HP: In my first pieces, I was true to the coloring of the West. After a while, though, I began to think: Well, this is boring. I’m an artist and I can do whatever I want. So, I began inventing my own colors, like purple horses, without any preconceived notions.
NK: What are some of your proudest career achievements?HP: In 2018, an exhibition of my work went from the Tucson Museum of Art to the Booth Museum in Georgia to the Desert Caballeros Western Museum [now Sigler Western Museum] in Wickenburg, Arizona. It’s cool anytime somebody says your work is worth a traveling exhibition. And the 2013 book Howard Post: Western Perspectives was a nice milestone.
NK: What are you working on now?HP: At the moment, I’m working on a fairly large 36-by-48-inch piece for this year’s Prix de West show in June. It’s a little bit of an overhead view of a group of horses bunched together in a corral, and I’m using my own sense of design to dictate and invent what colors they are. I feel fortunate to still be doing what I like to do.
contact informationhowardpostfineart.com
representationMedicine Man Gallery, Tucson, AZ, medicinemangallery.com.Altamira Fine Art, Jackson, WY, altamirafineart.com.Maxwell Alexander Gallery, Pasadena, CA, maxwellalexandergallery.com.Manitou Galleries, Santa Fe, NM, manitougalleries.com
upcoming showsPrix de West, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, June 12-13.Quest for the West, Eiteljorg Museum, September 11-12.
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