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Hello friends! After several months of work I will finally be exhibiting three brand new paintings in the 33rd Annual Holiday Miniatures Show at Abend Gallery! This show will open online and in person on Saturday December 9th at the Abend Gallery Cherry Creek location.
If you want an exclusive preview of this show before it is seen by the general public be sure to join my newsletter!
Below you will find progress pictures of each of my new paintings!
The wait is finally over!
Read moreRecently I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Hannah on her podcast “My Hometown Artist” about social media and the role it plays in contemporary life as an artist.
How do you show your authentic self on social media?
How can you engage with your current audience as well as expand your following?
I talk about these topics and more in this episode below!
Click the player above to listen to the full episode
I started this piece two years ago but didn’t have time to photograph it and come up with a description until now. I posted this painting on February 17th to celebrate my wife’s birthday.
From the first moment that I met this person I could see that she was different from anyone I had ever met. Her level of self knowledge and confidence immediately drew me to her. From our first meeting I saw that she strongly knew who she was and not afraid to hide her values or identity from anyone.
Since our meeting I have had the pleasure of knowing this person and living life with her for 11 years and she has never ceased to impress and inspire me. Her relentless commitment to self-knowledge and self-improvement inspire me everyday to be a better person and to look out for the ones I love. And her excitement to learn about herself and the world around her makes me admire her even more. This person moves through the world with passion and vulnerability, while effortlessly encouraging others to do the same.
This is the strongest person I know and I am honored to share my life with her.
This piece is titled “Apricity” meaning the warmth of sun in the winter.
I hope you enjoy watching my new painting process video for my piece “Origins”. This video is part 4 out of 10 for my painting process videos for the LA Art Show with Abend Gallery! I created 10 5x5s for this show and I will be sharing each process video here on my channel!
Read moreI am honored to have been interviewed by Khallil Stewart from the Garden. A great social media platform for artists and creatives. I hope you enjoy hearing about my creative process as a professional artist and what influences my work.
Read more
Hello everyone! I am so excited to announce that I will be having my very first online solo show with Abend Gallery the first weekend of June 2022! I have been working on this show for the last 6 months and I am excited to show 6 brand new paintings with you. I have worked incredibly hard on this show and it would mean the world to me if you take the time to check it out. Click the button below to view the entire show or go the Gallery section of my website to see each new piece with it’s description.
I am honored to have 10 brand new 5x5 paintings in the LA Art Show with Abend Gallery! I have spent the last several months meticulously painting 10 unique and vibrant paintings for this show and it is almost time to share them with you! Keep up-to-date on my social media and be sure to subscribe to my newsletter for an early and exclusive look at all ten paintings before the show opens!
The show will take place in the LA Convention Center (south hall) from Wednesday January 19th to Sunday January 23rd. Tickets are available on the LA Art Show website. All artworks will be available in person, on the Abend Gallery website and through Artsy.com.
I'm excited to share with you my latest commission! And this piece is extra meaningful because it is for my elementary/ middle school teacher who greatly influenced my passion for art at a young age. And to top it off he plans on hanging it in his classroom! It just warms my heart to think of this painting inspiring other young artists and academics to follow their passions.
This teacher encouraged me to draw, paint and create whenever I could but most of all he was a kind, respectful and empathetic person for me to look up to during my formative years. I was really excited when he contacted me about this commission especially when he mentioned the the bee imagery serving as the representation of the natural world. Bees are such an important part of our ecosystem that we often take for granted. So the image of gracious hands that appreciate and respect the natural just seemed like a perfect theme to explore.
I feel so honored to have had the opportunity to make this painting for a teacher and school that did so much for me growing up. And I love imaging this painting hanging in one of the small Waldorf classrooms in Maui inspiring young students who are trying to find their way in this world.
Here is the full description for the painting: In this painting we see humans and nature in complete harmony. We have done the work to understand our role in this world and now seek to preserve the important balance of nature. We now understand that every tiny insect and microscopic creature plays a part in our world and though we as humans are capable of many incredible things this does not diminish the significance of any other life on this planet. When we choose to coexist with and not dominate the natural world we find that it provides so much more than we ever thought. And we can have room in our hearts to give back to the planet that has given us everything we could have every wanted.
Hi all! I hope you enjoy this new batch of throwback posts from my social media accounts! It’s a little hard to stay super consistent with these posts but I always love putting them together when I can!
Same artist different decade! This is a bit of a wild throwback for me considering that the 2011 photo was from my very first art show in my senior year of high school and the 2021 photo was for my first art show with a gallery as a professional artist. At this time in high school I thought I wanted to be an art teacher because I figured there was no way I could make it as a professional artist and I did enjoyed teaching so why not just compromise. But at the same time I was starting to develop a real and personal passion for art beyond the normal positive reinforcement one gets when they make a pretty picture. I was beginning to experiment and self motivate because I was excited for what I could create. And in the ensuing years I would start to see my art as a skill that I could practice and develop with hard worth and passion.
Honestly I feel like I have changed a lot in the last 10 years and I feel so fortunate to have people in my life that have supported my personal and professional growth with unwavering love. Success is not a race, we all find our own definition of success at our own time and I feel that something this important should not be rushed. Everyday I try to find a balance between patiences and persistence so that I can appreciate this exact moment but also find the motivation to work towards a future that I define for myself.
Thank you for reading!
This is going to be a fun throwback Thursday post! Because believe it or not I’ve been using the same easel for almost 8 years now for many of my major projects and it’s time for a change! In the 2013 photo you will see that this easel came from Katy’s parents garage and they graciously set up a small painting space for me in said garage so that I could continue to develop my skills as an early art major in college. This gave me a space where I could be creative and work on some of my very first commissions and professional projects. Over the years this children’s easel became my primary working easel simply because it was familiar and served it purpose well at the time. This easel has been used in every studio and work space I have ever been in as well as a display easel for most of my festivals over the years. But as I have developed my technique and become more of a detailed painter it has become more difficult to use this easel because of its lack of adjustability and stability. And as you can see in the photo that I recreated in 2021 I’ve always had to hunch and lean in order to obtain those fine details that I love to create.
So it’s safe to say that it’s about time that I get a new easel! You can peep the next photo to see my brand new Richeson Dulce in all of its glory! Thank you @artisansantafe for special ordering this for me and being so communicative during this process. I’ve used this easel for almost a week now and I can’t tell you how nice it has been to adjust and customize it in order to make my painting experience more comfortable and enjoyable! I have no doubt that this will help my posture while painting for hours on end everyday haha! And overall I hope that this story can show that creators will always find a way to create, we don’t need the best tools or materials in order to do what we love, just give us time and encouragement! Thanks for reading!
My Brand New Easel!
For this throwback post I wanted to address a topic that I struggle with and I’m sure many other artists struggle with as well. This topic being our very judgmental minds overly criticizing a piece of artwork too early in the process. This concept of this post may seem simple but trust me when I say that I have to remind myself at the start of every painting to turn off my critical mind and just work. If you start to be too critical of a piece before it even has time to grow you end up restricting yourself and cluttering your mind with unnecessary negative thoughts. Your art will evolve at it’s own pace and its up to you to be kind to yourself and nurture the piece as best as you can. Every piece of art you create will inevitably have an awkward phase and that’s just part of the creation process. Be kind to yourself and trust the process.
I’m happy to announce that 5 of my most popular landscape paintings are now available as prints! “Enchantment” “Silent Snow” “Hallett Peak” “Winchester View” and “Dancing Leaves” are all available in 11”x14” and 16”x20” print sizes from Like Minded Productions. You can view each the images for each painting below!
Hi all! I’m excited to bring you two brand new process videos that show how I painted “Enchantment” and “Silent Snow”. Each of these videos has full audio commentary from me about how I created the piece and what concepts where behind it. Each of these original paintings has been sold but I’m in the process of getting prints available soon!
I hope you enjoy this process video for my painting “The Lost Traveler”. I worked very hard on this piece everyday for more than a month so I hope you enjoy seeing this process sped up to just a few minutes. This original painting is available from Abend Gallery in Denver, click the button below to view this piece on their website.
Hi everyone! I would like to introduce you to "The Lost Traveler." This is one of three new Terra Human paintings that I will be posting this week as a part of the Abend Gallery "Contemporary Figuration" show! ✅If you are interested in this piece feel free to contact me or use the button below to view the painting on Abend's website.
Here is my description of the painting: This piece illustrates a man who has been searching for himself. It has taken him so long to get where his is right now and yet has a long way to go from here. He wishes to better himself through self discovery but the road has left him lost and exhausted. But what he doesn’t realize is that he is already learning and changing more than he realizes. His body is staring to crumble and break down to eventually be reformed stronger than before. And the plants and trees are beginning to see him for who he truly is and feel comfortable growing with him and nurturing his heart. After a long night of rest, the morning sunlight is touching the distant peaks soon to awaken this traveler to a new day of opportunity.
Here is my description of the painting: This piece illustrates a man who has been searching for himself. It has taken him so long to get where his is right now and yet has a long way to go from here. He wishes to better himself through self discovery but the road has left him lost and exhausted. But what he doesn’t realize is that he is already learning and changing more than he realizes. His body is staring to crumble and break down to eventually be reformed stronger than before. And the plants and trees are beginning to see him for who he truly is and feel comfortable growing with him and nurturing his heart. After a long night of rest, the morning sunlight is touching the distant peaks soon to awaken this traveler to a new day of opportunity.
My first podcast interview! I'm so happy to have been interviewed by the kind and insightful Christopher Syyap in his podcast the Creative Brick Road! Give it a listen if you have time! You can find it on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher and Youtube!
Here are the links for Youtube and Spotify!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEHVljpwElI&t=1s
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1YpjIRtdJvXIPsGpw48WTF...
I'm so appreciative to have had this platform to talk about my artistic journey thus far and what I am looking forward to in the future!
Hi Everyone!
Here are some of my throwback Thursday posts that I like to put on Facebook and Instagram. They are great opportunities to look and back on my old work and reflect on how far I have come in the last few years. I hope you enjoy!
In this throwback post I thought it would interesting to look at two different styles I implemented in with a single reference. Before creating the realistic version of this painting I decided to make an energetic and expressive study to get a rough impression of the subject and experiment with color. Once I got into it I really enjoyed jumping around the piece with spontaneous brushwork that seemed to add some nice movement to the figure and the light source. Now I don’t always create these impressionistic studies but in this instance it serves as an interesting comparison to the more realistic “final” painting. In the realistic version I worked in sections with a variety of brushes to both apply and blend the paint. I focused on blending and color accuracy to make the piece realistic and nuanced.
I feel like both of these painting styles have a place in my creative practice and in the artistic world as a whole. Being spontaneous and heavy handed can serve as an amazing break from my usual detail oriented process. And I greatly admire fellow artists who can blend both realistic and expressive techniques into a single dynamic painting. Overall I really love how there is so much to explore in the realm of painting and I feel like I have barely scratched the surface!
For this post I thought I would show a triple comparison showing my progression from High School to College and finally professional art! And I want to take this opportunity to talk about the most important thing that I learned in this 15 year process.
Throughout my education I was especially lucky to have much more exposure to art than most and it really worked well for me. But like most children who are artistically inclined I was only rewarded for my "inherent artistic talent." Me and other creative students were told over and over again that we were talented and this choice of words told us that our artistic ability was fixed and couldn't be changed. Now I don't blame anyone for this because as a culture this is how we see artists because we don't understand them. So my time creating art in high school was great overall but I still was not able to shed this preconception that I was "talented" and therefor not able to improve.
My art experience in college was a transition time, I started to make a connection between practice and improvement in my art. My professors were the first people to tell me that art is a skill that can be developed over time. All of the sudden art felt less mysterious to me, I always knew that I was a hard worker and now I was starting to find a place to dedicate my effort.
It's safe to say that my professional career as a painter would not have happened if I wasn't shown that art is a skill not an innate talent. So much of how I work now is based on practice and slow improvement, trying to make every painting better than the last using my own personal growth to measure success. And I look forward to learning and improving as much as I can for the rest of my life 🤗
Thanks for listening
I am both humbled and excited to say that my painting "Flowers and Thorns" has been sold!
This piece is incredibly special to me so I really happy to see it going to a forever home of a new collector! I had the pleasure to speaking to this buyer on the phone and I have to say that it's really reassuring to know that this piece will be going to a loving home that really appreciates its beauty. The buyer said that she simply could not get the image out of her head for sever days and needed to buy the original piece!
As always, I'm greatly appreciative of this sale and so happy that something I created will be hanging in someones else's home!
About a month ago my father-in-law lost his dad and my wife had the idea to paint this beautiful photo of their hands during his final hours. Losing a loved one is incredibly hard, but I think it’s especially difficult to lose a parent. I asked my father-in-law about the significance of his and his father’s hands and this is what he said.
“Our hands represent our ability to work, to create, to hug, to wave, to congratulate. They hint at how hard our life was and how fragile we really are. My dad’s hands are a window into how he lived his life. He was a tireless hard worker and used his hands to build and create many a building, out of bricks, blocks, glass, and wood. The scars and callouses on his hands also give a glimpse that he did not live in fear and was tough enough to do anything he put his mind to. In his final hours, his hands were still strong and yet soft. I will miss dad and his hands.”
“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant…”
I chose to name this piece "When Our Work is Done" because Levi was a worker and a problem solver all of his life and now he finally gets to rest.
Levi will be greatly missed and never forgotten.
I'm really happy to announce the sale of not one, not two but THREE of my abstract landscape paintings from several years ago to a single collector! While I haven't painted in this style for a while now, I'm so thankful that this buyer sees the beauty and value in these paintings and decided that she wanted them in her home! I'm always appreciative of art buyers but I'm especially thankful that many people are still seeing the value of art in these uncertain times.
Hi friends, my throwback Thursday posts have continued on my Facebook and Instagram pages so I thought I would share some of the recent ones! These posts have been a great opportunity to reflect back on old work and so how my theme, techniques and concepts have changed and developed over the years. Enjoy!
Painting for my girlfriend vs Painting for my wife! Haha I thought this weeks TBT would be a fun opportunity to look way back at a painting I made for my girlfriend of just 3months who would eventually become my wife. In the summer after my freshman year of college I was extremely motivated to impress the new girl in my life with a personalized original oil painting! I was clearly still learning but was determined to make her something special. I decided to paint a view of Pikes Peak (a defining feature of her hometown, Colorado Springs) with some colorful and fluffy clouds which we both love.
Flash forward a few years to 2016 when I spent several months painting this enormous 4'x6' landscape painting of Crested Butte in my basement bedroom/studio so that she could hang it in her new home as her very own painting.
Now in 2020 I'm incredibly fortunate to be married to that girl and have this piece hanging in our home as a symbol of our dedication to one another. Just like art, our relationships take patience, dedication and a little bit of luck.
Here is a great Throwback Thursday comparing the initial sketch to the final product of "As One"!
It's no secret that this piece is one of my best paintings to date and I owe its success as well as many others to proper planning. This comparison of the sketch to the final product makes me think of how much I've come to rely on proper planning and prep for a piece so that I can fully create the image that captures the proper concept and mood.
I never used to plan out paintings very much and while this works great for other artists, I started to find that the more accuracy I could capture in my image, the more it would blend reality with a dream. So as the years have progressed I've done a lot more sketching, photoshop rendering and gridding of my paintings so that I can capture the image properly and then choose to deviate from it if I want. •
Overall the most beneficial preparation tool for me has been doing small painting studies before a final piece. If you follow my process you will see that before each Terra Human piece I will typically do a painting study of the landscape as well as the figure before attempting the final piece. This planning process helps me work out colors, shapes and proportions so that the final product can be beautiful and thought provoking.
I hope you enjoyed my reflections on this sketch to final product comparison!
When I posted this hand and tree sketch in 2018, it had gotten the MOST social media engagement that I had ever had at the time. And this shocked me because it wasn't even a painting! But I think it shows the strength in simplicity and the significance of a strong concept coming to life.
The hand and tree oil painting was a great achievement for me in understanding lights and shadows influence colors. I'm really proud of the realism I was able to obtain in this painting and I think it really helps the concept shine through.
Austin Howlett Art