Stephen Howard

In his ‘Mitre Peak’, Howard has presented this formidable yet achingly beautiful feature of Milford Sound with streams of snow punctuated by darkened ridges. A palette of ice blues and greys is soothed and ripened through textural moss greens that stretch up the mountain, climbing higher as snow melts and gives way to the peak beneath. While line and tone describe the iconic shapes and crevasses of Mitre Peak, Howard’s abstraction within the body of the cliff face emphasises a surreal sense of movement; as though smooth winds are swirling yet contained within each craggy facet.

Artist Bio

Stephen Howard is a Canterbury-based painter whose luminous landscapes explore the interplay between perception, memory, and movement. Working primarily in oil on board, Howard renders abstracted environments that offer a heightened experience of place shaped by the shifting presence of light and the slow unfolding of time.

Central to Howard’s practice is an intuitive understanding of light as both subject and medium. His distinctive use of colour and tone produces an atmospheric radiance that seems to animate the surface from within. Trees bend gently, edges shimmer, and light in motion softens forms. These gestures evoke the subtle rhythms of wind, weather, and the emotional currents of lived experience.

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