Catherine Howe (b. 1959, Buffalo, New York) is a contemporary painter based in New York whose work is known for its lush surfaces, expressive mark-making, and luminous use of color. Her paintings balance abstraction and representation, often referencing still life, floral forms, and the physical world while allowing imagery to dissolve into layered gesture and material presence.
Howe’s practice is grounded in an intensive engagement with surface. She builds her paintings through accumulated layers of paint, glaze, metallic pigment, and interference mica, creating richly textured compositions that shift between opacity and reflection. These materials produce an optical depth that encourages prolonged viewing, as forms emerge, recede, and reconfigure across the canvas. Drawing from traditions ranging from Dutch still life painting to postwar abstraction, her work remains rooted in the physical act of painting while embracing perceptual ambiguity.
Over the course of her career, Howe has exhibited extensively in the United States and internationally. She has had solo and group exhibitions at galleries including Winston Wächter Fine Art (New York), Von Lintel Gallery (Los Angeles and New York), William Shearburn Gallery (St. Louis), and Conduit Gallery (Dallas), among others. Her work has been featured in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, BOMB, and The Los Angeles Times.
In addition to her studio practice, Howe has been an influential educator. She served for many years on the graduate faculty at the New York Academy of Art, where she also chaired the Department of Critical Studies, contributing significantly to discourse around contemporary painting.
Howe lives and works between New York City and the Hudson Valley.