Ghislaine Howard:

She is best known for her ground-breaking exhibition concerning pregnancy and birth - the first of its kind - at Manchester City Art Gallery, A Shared Experience.

She exhibits on a regular basis with The Cynthia Corbett Gallery, Wimbledon, Firbob and Peacock, Knutsford,  Wendy Levy Fine Art and the Tib Lane Gallery both in Manchester and elsewhere. 

A painter of powerful and expressive means, she has shown her large cycle of paintings  The Stations of the Cross / The Captive Figure to great acclaim at the two Liverpool Cathedrals, Canterbury Cathedral, Gloucester Cathedral and Derby Cathedral. 

The exhibitions have been sponsored by Liverpool Hope University College, working with the support of Amnesty International, who said of her work:

"These significant and powerful paintings open up opportunities to highlight and explore the issue of torture and the plight of victims of oppression all over the world."

She recently created an altarpiece for Liverpool Hope University College on the theme of The Visitation.

In 2001 she was granted an Arts Council Year of the Artist Award which allowed her to work in a Women's Refuge from Domestic Violence.

She was also Artist in Residence at the BBC during the year 2000/1.

In 2002 she produced a sequence of six paintings each measuring 2.5 x 3.5 metres depicting scenes from the life of Saint Anthony of Egypt for a private house in North Yorkshire.

In July 2004 she completed a 3.5 x 5 metres altarpiece, The Visitation, for Liverpool Hope University and has recently finished a new work The Washing of the Feet for the Methodist Art Collection .

She has recently been commissioned by Liverpool Anglican Cathedral to produce a large piece, The Empty Tomb. Ghislaine has been inspired by the remnants of sleeping bags and blankets seen in doorways and other architectural settings around Manchester and other cities. Together with a piece by Tracy Emin, Ghislaine's work will be one of the highlights of Liverpool Cathedral's European Capital of Culture 2008 celebrations.

She has featured in various publications and television documentaries including Mischa Scorer’s Degas: An Old Man Mad About Art (with Richard Kendall, Omnibus, 1996).

She was part of the team that produced Degas and the Dance in 2004, which has been awarded the prestigious Peabody Award.

Her work is in many public and private collections including The Royal Collection.
 
Selected critical comments:

"It is through Howard's moving embodiment of empathy that she really makes her mark. Her work is so intimately tender in approach it could hardly have been painted by any male at any time anywhere."

- Robert Clark, The Guardian

"Howard is well on her way to becoming one of the great humanist artists of our time."

- Zaria Shreef, The Big Issue

"Ghislaine Howard's images are compelling, powerful, and emphatic. They are unusual in that they communicate man's inhumanity to man to the art lover and lay person alike. These are very important paintings that transcend the limitations of the gallery space to speak to us all."

- Dr Helen Bamber, director / founder
of the Medical Foundation for the Victims of Torture

Cleft in the rocks, Flamborough Head 1990 Oil on canvas 127cm x 101.5cm 50" x 40"

Father and child 1985 Oil on canvas 145cm x 115 cm 57" x 45"

•  Forthcoming exhibitions

Forthcoming exhibitons

Selected exhibitons since 1993

Selected publications since 1993

The Tablet. Laura Gascoigne . A piece on The Stations of the Cross: The Captive Figure

Presence, edited by Meryl Doney to accompany the exhibition at St. Paul's Cathedral, London. 2004

Stations of the Cross / The Captive Figure, An illustrated publication edited by Michael Howard of Manchester Metropolitan University with contributions by Joan Crossley of Leicester University and Shannon Ledbetter of Liverpool Hope University College.

Exhibiting Gender, Sarah Hyde, Courtauld Institute of Art, section of book relates to my drawing owned by Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester University Press, September 1997.

Steeple Chase Park, by Frances Nagle, 1996

Artist's Diary, Art Review, March 1994.

Two works reproduced in Portraiture and Drawing the Figure published by Dorling Kindersley, in association with the Royal Academy, 1994.

Article on Risley exhibition in Big Issue, March 1994.

A Shared Experience - catalogue for Manchester City Art Gallery and Wellcome Foundation, Introductory essay by David Peters-Corbett, 1993/4.

Work featured in various Arts For Health publications, 1993.

Reviews in various publications including: Modern Painters, The Gallery Magazine, The Guardian, The Women's Art Journal, British Medical Journal, Anglican Theological Review, included in features in Daily Telegraph and the Big Issue, Living Edge.

Television

Featured artist in Granada Television's In Celebration programme, The Nude,(July 1994).

Television coverage on BBC and Granada; numerous appearances on local television concerning various residencies, 1993 until present.

Radio

Collections

Private collections: Great Britain, Eire, France, Belgium, Germany, USA, Australia and elsewhere.