The Soul of Oil Painting: A Dance Between Artist and Medium
Oil painting has long held a revered place in the canon of artistic expression. Its richness, depth, and versatility offer artists not merely a way to depict the world but a method to embody emotion, atmosphere, and memory on canvas. In Painting with Oils, David Howell guides us into this world not through rigid instruction, but through contemplative exploration. It is not a book of technical mastery laid out in steps, but rather a deeply personal meditation on what it means to paint, why the artist chooses the brush, the color, the gesture, and how these choices emerge from something deeper than surface technique.
Howell’s prose captures the tactile beauty of oil painting, the way the brush glides through thick pigment, the resistance of the canvas, the transformation of intention into texture. His reflections suggest that oil painting is more than an art formit is a way of thinking, of being present, and of reckoning with the ephemeral nature of experience. While acknowledging the common belief that oils are intimidating, he subtly redirects that narrative. The complexity of the medium, in his hands, becomes its strength invitation rather than a barrier.
He urges artists not to fear the perceived difficulty of oils but to embrace the freedom that lies within experimentation. For Howell, oils are not merely a means to depict realitythey are a medium through which the artist discovers new ways to perceive and feel. Each stroke is not just an act of creation but an act of communion, where artist and medium converse in a language that is silent but deeply expressive.
This spirit of dialogue extends beyond the brush and canvas; it connects the viewer to the moment of creation. Howell’s approach is to invite, rather than instruct, encouraging artists and readers to think about the “why” behind the work. In doing so, he places oil painting in a broader philosophical contextas a vessel for exploration, self-reflection, and the telling of internal truths that words often fail to capture.
Atmosphere, Emotion, and the Art of Suggestion
David Howell’s body of work speaks a language built not on precise detail, but on resonance. Whether rendering the rolling Yorkshire moors or capturing the elegant motion of horses in full gallop, he prioritizes emotional cadence over photographic likeness. This is not art meant to imitate reality with sterile accuracy; instead, it seeks to evoke, to suggest, and to compel the viewer into completing the picture in their own mind.
There is a painterly honesty in Howell’s compositions that favors the suggestive over the literal. His use of naturalistic huessoft ochres, deep ultramarines, muted greens, and burnt siennas mirrors the hues found in nature, yet they are never employed with rigid fidelity to place. Instead, they are curated to capture light, mood, and memory. His skies feel like they have just shifted, his water surfaces shimmer with the remnants of wind, and his figures appear caught in the midst of narrative rather than posed for it.
This commitment to atmosphere rather than geography means his paintings exist not just as representations of a scene, but as emotional artifacts. They reflect not only the location where the easel was planted, but the sensations of being there: the saltiness of the air, the way sunlight flickers between waves, the haunting silence of a distant landscape. His brushwork often leaves room for the viewer to breathe within the painting, to find their own meaning in the haze of a horizon or the shadow under a tree.
Howell’s plein air technique, painting directly from life in the open air, lends his works a vibrant immediacy. The fleeting qualities of natural light and shifting weather are captured with a sensitivity that comes only from working in direct communion with the subject. This immediacy imbues the paintings with a sense of presencethey are not merely scenes recalled, but experiences witnessed. This lends each canvas a kind of urgency, as though the artist arrived just moments before the storm broke or the tide shifted, and was compelled to commit that moment to paint before it slipped away.
His interest lies not in the topographical accuracy of what he sees, but in the emotional veracity of how it feels. It is this sensitivity to feeling and his prioritization of impression over precision that elevates his paintings into something poetic. The works become meditations on light and time, on transience and permanence, on what it means to really see.
Pilgrimage of the Painter: Finding the Sacred in the Ordinary
What emerges from Painting with Oils is not just a guide to painting but a philosophy of art as a journey, literal and spiritual. Howell evokes the figure of the artist not as a technician in search of mastery, but as a kind of modern-day pilgrim. The act of painting becomes a form of devotion, a way of honoring the overlooked, the worn, the weathered. He finds beauty not in the grandiose but in the quietly stone wall scoured by wind, the lonely tree bent by decades of sea air, the fleeting cloud casting a shadow across a dune.
This reverence for the timeworn infuses his writing and his work with a particular sensibility. It’s not nostalgia he’s after, but a recognition of the stories carried in the surfaces of the world. His visual vocabulary is steeped in a kind of rustic elegance, where decay and endurance coexist. He paints with the eye of someone who sees value in moments often passed over: the gleam of water on cobblestones, the way dusk settles into a coastal village, the echo of hooves fading into mist.
Painting, in this sense, becomes not just representation, but revelation. It is a process by which the artist uncovers what is hidden in plain sight, what the world reveals only to those willing to slow down and look. Howell champions the idea that art does not need to explainit only needs to invite. The viewer is not handed a story but offered a portal into a feeling, a texture, a whisper of memory.
This philosophy also serves as a gentle challenge to the aspiring artist: to be present, to travel not for the destination but for the discovery, and to paint not to impress, but to connect. His reflections remind us that oil painting, at its core, is not a test of skill but a test of seeing how deeply and honestly one can observe, feel, and translate the world around them.
Through Howell’s lens, the brush becomes a compass, the canvas a journal, and each finished work a relic of an inner and outer journey combined. There’s an undeniable romance in this approach, but it is grounded in discipline, in patience, and in humility. He reminds us that art is not about dominating the medium, but about yielding to it, trusting it, and allowing it to speak.
In Painting with Oils, David Howell offers more than artistic insight offers an invitation to think of painting as a way of life. Whether standing before a wild seascape, sketching the curve of a distant hillside, or contemplating the form of a quiet figure, he approaches each subject with a spirit of curiosity and reverence. His book is a quiet manifesto for the soulful artist, reminding us that every brushstroke holds the power to preserve something fleeting, to translate something ineffable, and to deepen our relationship with the world.
Atmosphere as the Living Narrative in David Howell’s Art
David Howell does not approach the atmosphere in his paintings as a passive element or a scenic backdrop is the essence of his storytelling. In his hands, oil paint becomes a means of transmuting air into emotion, time into texture. Each brushstroke breathes life into intangible moments, capturing a distilled experience rather than a straightforward depiction. To observe one of Howell’s works is to be drawn into a realm where the sky speaks and the air hums with memory.
For Howell, painting is not the act of copying nature or capturing photographic realism. Rather, it is an attempt to extract the soul of a moment, to bottle the unseen vibrations of a place and time. The landscapes he creates are imbued with presence, not merely observed but deeply felt. When he paints the golden quietude before a storm rolls over the Yorkshire Dales or the pearly gleam that dances across Venetian canals, he is preserving a breath in suspension. These aren’t just scenesthey are moments caught between becoming and dissolving, embodying that elusive paradox of time: ephemeral and eternal all at once.
What makes his work especially potent is that it doesn’t seek to narrate linearly. The narrative is atmospheric and emotive rather than descriptive. The viewer is not guided by a plot but by a feeling, a sensory echo that stays long after the visual encounter has passed. Howell’s ability to create this immersive narrative experience is rooted in his profound understanding of oilsnot just as a medium, but as a language. His choices in glaze, density, and brushwork aren’t decorative flourishes; they are structural components of a larger, sensory dialogue between the viewer and the canvas.
His paintings function almost as visual poems, where each layer of pigment is like a verse, resonating with silence and suggestion. The air in a Howell canvas does more than move around objects participates in the story, shaping the emotional temperature of the scene. There's a spiritual intimacy in the way his skies unfurl, in the way shadows stretch across the land as though remembering something long buried. Viewers may not always recognize the specific location, but they recognize the truth of feeling a nostalgia that doesn’t belong to any one place or person but pulses from the shared well of human experience. Howell’s work invites a form of listening with the eyes, encouraging us to slow down, to inhabit the quiet thresholds of light and weather, and to consider that the most profound narratives may not be told in words at all, but in the hush between them.
Texture as the Resonant Voice of Expression
In David Howell’s work, texture is more than technique is voice. Texture articulates mood, speaks in tones, whispers or shouts depending on its form. A rugged impasto might conjure the thunderous churn of waves, while a silky glaze might suggest the hush of twilight settling over a quiet valley. This nuanced use of surface detail creates an intimate experience, one that allows the viewer to feel the subject as much as see it. The interplay between texture and atmosphere creates a duality: a visual presence with a tactile soul.
His marine paintings exemplify this with particular clarity. The ocean, in Howell’s world, is not merely an expanse of water; it is a being in flux, a metaphor for the artistic process itselfunpredictable, forceful, and capable of sublime stillness. The skies above, laden with moisture and movement, mirror this narrative tension. His brushwork navigates the chaos and calm of the sea with the confidence of a sailor steering into unknown waters. The oils lend themselves beautifully to this exploration. Their inherent versatility allows Howell to suggest movement through layered translucency or to command stillness with heavy, opaque strokes. Through this, he captures not only what the sea looks like, but how it feels to stand on its shore.
Even his equestrian paintings, often energized by motion and momentum, speak through texture. The glint of sun on taut muscle, the dust suspended mid-air, the thunder of hooves just beyond the frame are conveyed not through meticulous detail but through expressive strokes that evoke speed and tension. These works are about essence, not anatomy. They offer a study of movement caught in transition, of power held in restraint, and of life in its most urgent expression.
The emotional gravity of his texture work carries into more subdued subjects as well. His nude studies, understated yet deeply emotive, strip away artifice and ornamentation. In these works, the texture softens, becoming almost devotional. The oils render human flesh not as an object of desire but as a vessel of vulnerability and resilience. These paintings honor the form in its most essential truth: grounded, temporal, and quietly sacred. The smooth gradations of light and tone create a feeling of breath against skin, of warmth beneath the surface, revealing an intimacy that transcends the visual.
The Artist’s Intuitive Lexicon: Oil as Medium, Memory, and Mind
Throughout the wide range of subjects he exploreslandscape, marine, equestrian, or figureDavid Howell’s distinctive voice remains consistent: quietly authoritative, instinctively intelligent, and emotionally articulate. He does not seek to astonish with spectacle or overwhelm with precision. Instead, he engages the viewer in a visual dialogue, one that is shaped as much by silence and suggestion as it is by form and color. His work invites reflection rather than reaction, creating space for personal resonance and interpretation.
What sets Howell apart is his intuitive relationship with oil paint as a living medium. He treats it not as a tool but as a collaborator. He understands its capacity for depth and subtlety, its ability to hold time within its layers. In this sense, painting for Howell is an act of translationturning sensory impressions and emotional undercurrents into physical form. The resulting works are textured conversations, layered with meaning and marked by the artist’s emotional fingerprint.
Oil painting, with its luminous, slow-drying nature, allows Howell to build atmospheres gradually, like mist settling on a hillside. Each layer is a gesture, a thought preserved. This method invites patience, meditation, and reconsideration. His creative process mirrors the way memory itself operates: fragmented, nonlinear, often reinterpreted upon revisitation. There’s a rhythm to his compositions that reflects the repetition of certain color harmonies, the recurrence of spatial motifs, the echo of past light across new canvases. In this way, Howell’s oeuvre becomes a kind of visual journal, an archive of felt experience rather than seen phenomena.
Rather than imposing a rigid formal structure, Howell favors organic growth in his work. He allows the painting to lead, responding instinctively rather than formulaically. This commitment to intuition gives his work a kind of humility, a refusal to dominate the subject in favor of listening to it. That is perhaps the most powerful aspect of his artistry: the willingness to respond, to interpret, and to convey without the burden of control. In doing so, he invites us into a world where art becomes less about representation and more about recognitionwhere we find in painted air and textured brushstrokes something deeply familiar, something profoundly human.
In David Howell’s artistic universe, oil painting is more than craftit is communion. It is a language of atmosphere and emotion, where texture speaks louder than lines and presence outweighs precision. Each canvas is a place and a moment, a weathered whisper of something once felt. And in viewing his work, we do not just observewe remember, even if we do not know exactly what.
The Ritual of Creation: Where Painting Becomes Presence
To understand the art of David Howell is to step into a world where technique dissolves into something far deepera meditative rhythm, a contemplative act that transcends mere instruction. In his book Painting with Oils, Howell offers not just a guide to materials or methods, but a poetic exploration of what it truly means to see. His process is intimate and intuitive, a quiet choreography between hand, eye, and spirit. The canvas, for him, is not a surface to be conquered but a space to be inhabited.
Painting, in Howell’s philosophy, is closer to a ritual than a routine. He speaks of each session as an invocational call to be fully present, fully aware. This approach breathes life into the creative act, transforming it into a kind of visual prayer. The gathering of impressions from nature or memory becomes a sacred beginning, followed by the internal distillation of vision. Only then does the brush meet the canvas, not with haste, but with a considered grace that mirrors the natural cycles of the earth.
This rhythm, this cadence, is essential. Howell’s creative flow echoes the organic processes he observes in the world around the slow shift of light, the ebb and flow of the sea, and the stillness before a storm. There’s no urgency in his movements, only intention. Every gesture counts. Every pause matters. In his work, the silence between brushstrokes is as important as the marks themselves.
Painting with Oils reveals this inner world not through didactic instructions but through reflections that feel at once personal and universal. The reader is not simply shown how to paint; they are encouraged to feel, to question, to linger. Howell does not believe in mastery that arrives overnight. For him, painting is a lifelong journey, an ongoing dialogue with both the seen and the unseen. It is this devotion to process, to exploration without destination, that defines his voice.
Landscapes in Motion: Embracing Uncertainty on the Road
While Howell’s studio in the serene North Yorkshire countryside offers him a consistent sanctuary place where the air is heavy with silence and the skies speak in shifting toneshis art is anything but confined. He frequently ventures into the wild, carrying his tools into unpredictable spaces. From the rugged coastlines of Britain to the golden dust of the Middle East, his practice is infused with the energy of the road. These landscapes, untamed and fleeting, shape not only his palette but his perception.
Painting outdoors, or en plein air, strips away the illusion of control. Light changes minute by minute. Winds whip through fields. Unexpected rain may blur a half-finished sketch. But Howell embraces this instability. He welcomes it. These moments of interference are not disruptions to be avoided but invitations to evolve. The environment becomes a collaborator, mood, its chaos, its beauty, all folding into the work.
This openness to change grants his paintings a kind of living energy. A cloud that casts a shadow across a canvas becomes part of the final piece. A gust of wind may dictate a different brushstroke or prompt an entirely new direction. In the unpredictability of nature, Howell finds truth. His nomadic approach allows spontaneity to lead, rather than control, his compositions. There is freedom here, liberation from the rigidity that can sometimes encase studio work.
The result is a body of art that feels awake. Howell’s outdoor scenes pulse with the breath of the moment in which they were made. His compositions don’t merely represent landscapes; they echo them. They resonate with the light, temperature, and tension of the day. The very act of painting becomes a conversation with the eelementsgive-and-take between self and setting, between emotion and execution.
Travel also deepens his observational eye. Whether walking a sunlit path in Morocco or watching the light fade over a Yorkshire moor, Howell captures not just the visual character of a place, but its emotional climate. Each painting becomes a memory made visible, a record of being in communion with the land. This intimacy, born from direct experience, imbues his work with a soulful authenticity.
The Medium as Mirror: Color, Emotion, and the Quiet Art of Attention
David Howell’s choice of oil paint is both practical and philosophical. While he works in various media, oils offer something distincta temporal generosity, a capacity for revision, a slow-drying nature that mirrors the pace at which he likes to create. In his hands, oil becomes more than pigment and binder. It becomes a vessel for feeling, a medium that holds memory and mood within its layers.
He often describes painting in oils as a kind of dialogue. It is not always harmonious. There are moments of conflict, tension, compromise. Each stroke is a negotiation between what the artist intends and what the paint reveals. This relationship is not passiveit demands presence, patience, and a willingness to listen. Howell treats each canvas as a conversation, not a declaration. This makes his work not only technically accomplished but emotionally resonant.
Color is where Howell’s sensitivity truly shines. He does not approach tone and temperature with clinical detachment. Instead, they are deeply sensory experiences. A pale blue may carry the chill of morning mist. A muted ochre might whisper of sunbaked earth. These choices are never arbitrary. They are rooted in memory, in mood, in the felt experience of being somewhere, of feeling something.
Underpainting plays a crucial role in his process. A warm base layer may peek through the final surface, like a half-forgotten dream surfacing beneath words. Edges are sometimes softened to suggest movement or distance, while other times they are sharply drawn to pull the viewer’s attention. But none of these decisions are dictated by academic rules. They emerge from the atmosphere of the piece, from what the painting itself seems to require.
Painting with Oils reflects this same philosophy. The book resists formulas. It avoids step-by-step guides in favor of immersive exploration. Howell invites the reader into his world not to copy it, but to discover their visual language. He offers insight, not instruction. The pages are filled with his artwork images, carefully chosen to speak where words fall short. The visual and the verbal combine to create a space for contemplation and creativity.
This invitation is particularly powerful in today’s world, where immediacy is often mistaken for insight, and shortcuts are mistaken for wisdom. Howell’s work is a reminder of the beauty of slowness, of devotion, of showing up day after day with no promise of perfection. It is a quiet revolution that asks us to stay curious, to remain open, to treat the process as a form of pilgrimage.
In short, David Howell’s approach is not just about painting. It’s about learning to see. To truly look. To notice the subtleties of color, the play of light, and the stories held within shadows. His art teaches us that creation is not about arriving at answers, but about deepening the questions. Through his oils, his travels, and his enduring patience, he offers something rare: a way of being in the world that is rooted in observation, in wonder, and in the poetic rhythm of process itself.
The Power of Presence in David Howell’s Art
In the world of oil painting, where technique and expression often intersect in complex ways, David Howell’s philosophy stands out for its meditative simplicity and deep resonance. For Howell, art is not an act of grandiosity or self-projection. It is, more profoundly, an act of presence. Every brushstroke he places on canvas is not merely an aesthetic decision, is a moment of witnessing. His approach transforms painting from a visual exercise into a spiritual and observational discipline.
To truly understand Howell's process, one must grasp the idea that painting, for him, is an act of being. Each landscape, figure, and glimmer of light he paints is a testimony to a specific moment in time moment deeply felt and attentively observed. His commitment lies not in dazzling the viewer, but in honoring the quiet truths that reside in the spaces we often overlook: the hush before a storm on the Yorkshire coast, the golden haze of a late Arabian afternoon, the focused grace of a horse poised in motion. These are not grand spectacles. They are poetic revelations.
Howell’s paintings are not about the pursuit of perfection, but about perception. They don’t demand the viewer’s awethey invite their presence. His art insists on attentiveness, on slowing down, on listening with the eyes. In this way, Howell’s work functions almost like a visual journal, capturing the subtleties of place, light, and movement with the same reverence a poet reserves for a line of verse. His practice reveals that the essence of a landscape or a living form is not found in its literal likeness, but in the artist’s attentive response to it.
Standing before one of Howell’s paintings, one enters a realm where stillness becomes eloquent. It is not simply about scenery, it is about the emotional topography of the moment. There’s a profound generosity in his work, a quiet offering that encourages the viewer to look beyond the surface and into the depth of feeling embedded in each canvas. The scenes he portrays, whether familiar or foreign, hold a kind of sacred neutrality; they ask nothing of the viewer but attention, and in return, they offer the gift of clarity.
This quality of inwardness, of thoughtful observation, is increasingly rare in a time when much of contemporary visual culture is built around spectacle and immediacy. Howell reminds us that the world doesn’t always need embellishment to be beautiful needs to be seen. His paintings are meditations on light, silence, and the organic rhythm of nature and human gesture. He resists the impulse to dominate the scene; instead, he becomes part of it, blending the artist’s presence with the subject until the boundary between observer and observed begins to dissolve.
In this dissolution lies the transformative power of his work. Viewers are not just passive recipients of imagery, but participants in an unspoken conversation. Howell’s sensitivity to nuancehis ability to find a story in the curve of a hill, the slant of a roof, or the lean of a figurereveals a kind of seeing that transcends skill. It is a devotion to truthfulness, not in a documentary sense, but in an emotional and experiential one. His art is not only a visual record but a lived moment, and to witness it is to remember how to see again.
Presence, in Howell’s hands, is not a still point; it is a flowing, breathing, evolving relationship between self and subject. Each painting becomes a threshold through which we glimpse not only the external world, but also the interior landscape of the artist himself. In an age of distraction, his work offers a rare and necessary pause, an invitation to reconnect with the quiet dignity of observation, and with the profound beauty that resides in simply being.
Oil Painting as a Medium of Discovery and Devotion
Oil paint, with its storied legacy and tactile richness, becomes more than just a medium in Howell’s hands, becoming a living partner in the creative process. Its ability to capture depth through layering, its slow drying time that encourages introspection, and its unique interplay of opacity and luminosity make it the ideal conduit for his artistic inquiries. For Howell, oils are not merely a toolthey are a language, capable of whispering the unsaid and holding space for contemplation.
What distinguishes Howell’s work is not just his mastery over the medium, but his refusal to let technique dominate intention. His brushwork is both precise and restrained, informed by decades of practice but never constrained by it. There is a quiet modesty in his methodan understanding that a painting must be allowed to breathe. The canvas is not a space for domination, but for discovery. This sensibility lends his work a sense of integrity that resonates with artists and viewers alike.
Unlike many painters who strive for immediate impact or visual drama, Howell favors the slow burn of nuance. He builds his compositions gradually, allowing each layer to speak, each mark to earn its place. There is an unspoken dialogue between artist and surface, where revisions are welcomed as part of the journey rather than erased as mistakes. This openness to process over product gives his paintings a living qualitythey feel less like finished artifacts and more like ongoing meditations.
For emerging artists or those who have struggled with oils, his approach offers reassurance. The medium may be challenging, but it is also forgiving, generous, and deeply expressive. Howell’s work stands as a testament to what is possible when one approaches oil painting not as a test of control, but as a practice of connection. It’s not about overpowering the materialit’s about listening to it, responding to it, partnering with it.
In this spirit, Howell becomes more than a painter becomes a companion on the artistic journey. His book is not written as a traditional manual, nor does it pose as a definitive guide to technique. Instead, it reads as a reflective dialogue between artist and reader, full of insight, encouragement, and invitation. He shares not just his methods, but his mindset, revealing how painting can become a way of seeing more deeply and living more attentively.
The Artist as Witness, the Painting as Testimony
At the core of David Howell’s philosophy is a compelling reframing of the artist’s rolenot as a creator imposing vision upon the world, but as a witness attuned to it. To paint, in his worldview, is to be present in the fullest sense: to feel the texture of the wind, to note the shift of shadows, to register the quiet drama of life unfolding in real time. It is an act of reverence, of humility, and of bearing witness to the beauty of what simply is.
This perspective infuses every page of Painting with Oils, turning the book into far more than an exploration of artistic process. It becomes a kind of manifesto for mindful creation, a call to artists of all levels to anchor their practice not in mastery, but in attention. Through his words and images, Howell affirms that the value of a painting lies not in how flawlessly it is executed, but in how deeply it is felt.
His commitment to truthnot in a photographic sense, but in an emotional, atmospheric oneis what sets his work apart. When he paints a landscape, he does not aim to replicate it; he seeks to understand it, to absorb its essence and translate that experience into form. In doing so, he allows the painting to become a vessel for memory, emotion, and perceptionsomething enduring born from something ephemeral.
Even as he garners recognition through exhibitions and collections, Howell remains anchored in his core belief that the act of painting is sacred in itself. Success is acknowledged, but never allowed to eclipse the purpose. The true achievement, in his eyes, is not acclaim, but authenticity. And it is this ethos that makes his book so resonantnot only for seasoned artists but for anyone yearning to connect more meaningfully with the creative act.
For readers and painters alike, Howell offers a gentle yet profound reminder: that to paint is not merely to depict, but to attend. Not too perfect, but to perceive. That every moment spent painting is an opportunity to slow down, to observe, and to honor what is fleeting by giving it form. In the oil-slicked surfaces of his canvases, we find an enduring truth: that art, at its most powerful, is an act of presence. And the artist, at their most honest, is not just a maker butt a witness.
