Life on Venus III | The Organic, Live Auction

Rosalind Howdle (b. 1997) is a London-based artist. She obtained a BA in Painting from Camberwell, UAL, and on graduating was awarded the Vanguard Prize. She has also studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She is currently completing an MA in Painting at the RCA as a recipient of the Ali H. Alkazzi Scholarship and has exhibited in London, Vancouver and Berlin.

"In painting I have found not only a medium, but a subject too. The act of representing something is philosophically rich, problematic even, but it is the mutability (and subversion) of representation possible in painting that I am driven by – the fact that figuration is plastic, that recognisability is malleable. I tend to approach painting quasi-scientifically, viewing my subject matter as just matter to be inflated, stretched, mutated, dissolved, cartoonised or abbreviated. Using hybrid, morphic forms, I aim to reach the place where language’s categorical impulse fails, and thereby explore liminal, non-binary states of being. I do not attempt to skew recognisability through reduction – this is not a journey into abstraction, but a journey out of categorisation.

My work usually unfurls from a small point: from a pun, thesis, or visual simile. I’m also interested in the status of painting (as an image-making endeavour) in the internet-era, where the image has become ubiquitous, self-replicating, incorporeal and detachable from context. My paintings often mirror qualities of the digital and cyberspace. Here, classical physics has abdicated: gravity gives way to the upscrolling feed, light is that 24/7 glow of the monitor, and space is flattened to the browser tab." - Rosalind Howdle, 2020