BayouArtist | Pat Howard

article by STARLA GATSON
photography by KELLY MOORE CLARK

BayouArtist Pat Howard didn’t pick up a paintbrush until she moved to the Bayou State.  After a hiatus, Howard has returned to the canvas.

Though many of her art industry peers recall childhood days filled with arts and crafts, Pat Howard cannot do the same. She grew up in a dysfunctional home, she says, where art wasn’t prioritized. “We were always told to go outside and play,” Howard remembers after revealing, “I can’t even remember coloring or drawing.” 

By the time Howard was 13, she’d dropped out of seventh grade and traded afternoons playing outside for waitressing shifts. Eventually, she returned to the classroom to study business and landed a job at an engineering firm. There, she met her husband. The two married in 1968 and began building a life together complete with three children, plus four grands and two great-grands who joined the family later on.

The family’s life was in Oklahoma, Howard’s home state, until her husband’s job relocated him to Louisiana. When they arrived in the Bayou State, every Howard except for the family matriarch had something new to dive into. Her husband was settling into working in a new state, and her children were in school and needed her less. That left Howard with plenty of time on her hands and an eagerness to fill it.

That’s where art came in. Howard had no prior artistic experience. But a spiritual awakening she’d had inspired her to pick up a paintbrush. Heeding the divine direction she’d been given, Howard signed up for a local painting class. 

“I think it was God’s direction,” Howard says of her spiritual awakening and choice to start painting. “It was new to me, but I think God has worked in me through painting and brought a new awareness to life.” 

Howard remembers that, as her instructor walked her through various techniques, she offered her advice on how to accurately relay that information to the students she thought Howard would have one day. 

“That shocked me,” Howard says. “[She’d say], ‘When you teach.’ When I teach? Why would she say that to me? Apparently, she saw that I was going to continue with [art].”

The painting teacher’s assessment of Howard was spot-on. She would continue her art education — she enrolled at Northeast Louisiana University, now the University of Louisiana Monroe, intending to get a degree in painting. Not only that, but she would eventually find herself leading classes of blossoming artists at the Masur Museum for a short time. 

“My love was not teaching,” she says. “I always stressed about any frustration the students might be feeling. I loved every minute of the painting process, even if I realized later that [the painting] wasn’t good. I couldn’t relate to their struggles.” 

Howard didn’t need to teach to find success and fulfillment in the local art scene. She didn’t complete her degree — “With the family, the kids and all, it just got to be a bit much,” she says of her decision to leave two years into her degree program. However, she found ways to continue learning. One of these was by connecting with other local creatives, like portrait artist Becky Rich. 

“A few years [after attending NLU], I met Becky, and we rented our first studio at Natchitoches One,” Howard remembers. “It was a wonderful, large space with great natural light. But when it rained, we had to place buckets around to catch the drips from the leaking roof. Later, we secured a better place on Trenton Street in Antique Alley, where we operated a working studio.” 

Soon, other artists joined Howard and Rich, including Janet Anderson and Lacey Stinson. This community, plus the connections Howard made through her involvement with the Monroe Art Association and Ouachita River Arts Guild, filled the artist, wife, and mother’s cup. But still, she says, she needed a way to earn an income from painting, and, as she’d already learned, teaching wasn’t it.

“Because of financial pressure, I began painting ceramic backsplashes for people,” Howard remembers. “It was not for the love of painting, but just because I needed some money. I soon burned out.”

Howard’s backsplash-induced burnout led her to stop painting altogether. She sold her supplies and began searching for another outlet. That led her to the world of duplicate bridge. Howard was deeply intrigued by the card game, attending tournaments and eventually achieving her Life Master Award. It was a nice change of pace from the art world she’d become somewhat disillusioned by, she says. Plus, it was fun.

Howard says her bridge days continued until her daughter announced her pregnancy. She decided she would take a brief pause from the game to help take care of her youngest granddaughter after her mother returned to work.

“That brief pause has lasted almost 14 years,” she says, laughing. 

With bridge no longer a central part of her life, Howard had more time to not only spend with her grandchildren — two of them are talented artists themselves — but also to return to her own painting practice. She resumed making art in 2020, when she, like so many others, was forced to stay at home to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus. 

“I [put Visqueen down] in the dining room — that was difficult for me because it’s a small space and I’m very messy — and started painting again,” Howard recalls, adding that she intended to dive back into the local art scene she had once been so heavily involved in. However, she discovered the art world she once knew no longer existed.

“I’d lost contact with all the artists I’d previously known,” she says. “There were no monthly meetings to attend, no newsletter coming in the mail [sharing art opportunities]. Now, social media had taken over, and I felt lost in a new world of online business.”

Howard admits navigating life as an artist in the digital age has been somewhat overwhelming at times: “It’s intimidating. It’s a new experience for me, and it’s not one that I’ve embraced easily.”

Fortunately, other art professionals in the area have graciously given Howard tips and encouragement on managing her social media profiles — she’s @pathoward_artist on Instagram and Pat Howard, Artist on Facebook — and using them to promote her work. She’s learning how powerful a tool social media can be for an artist, but Howard admits she’s still not the biggest fan of it. She prefers in-person communication, and she longs for the strong camaraderie and relationships she used to share with local artists. 

“I want to be with other artists painting, critiquing, and helping each other,” she says. “That’s what I’m missing. I don’t know if that’ll happen again, but as God opens doors, I plan to walk through them.” 

Howard doesn’t let the fact that the art world she is now part of is much different than the one in which she was once so deeply entrenched discourage her too much. Sure, she has had to lean into social media and search for community. But she still gets to do the thing she loves so dearly: paint. She does it every day except Shabbat, and she’s always learning new things and trying unfamiliar techniques. Her near-daily practice has left her with a pretty large body of work, some of which will be on display at her solo exhibition at the Northeast Louisiana Arts Council Gallery in April. 

Howard will be showing both old and new works, some painted using techniques she learned from her first art instructor and others with techniques and styles she picked up from other artists’ work — “Any time I watch another artist or see their work, I’m inspired to try something different,” she shares. 

Regardless of the painting technique — lately, she’s been into pointillism; it slows her down, she says — or the medium — oil paint is her favorite, she says — she uses, Howard always aims to emphasize the beauty in ordinary scenes and portray subjects accurately and truthfully as she works. Painting is a challenge, she says, but one she loves and has no intention of stopping. 

“If you want to forget the cares of life, start painting,” she declares.