Video
Works
  • Clifford How, Where Time Stands Still – Myrtle Forest, 2022
    Clifford How
    Where Time Stands Still – Myrtle Forest, 2022
    oil on linen
    208 x 214.5 cm; 210 x 216.5 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Quiescent, 2022
    Clifford How
    Quiescent, 2022
    oil on linen
    168.5 x 184 cm; 170.5 x 186 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Contemplation – Liquid Sky, 2022
    Clifford How
    Contemplation – Liquid Sky, 2022
    oil on linen
    168.5 x 184 cm; 170.5 x 186 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Endurance – Snow Melt, 2022
    Clifford How
    Endurance – Snow Melt, 2022
    oil on linen
    168.5 x 184 cm; 170.5 x 186 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, The Quartz Monolith – Frenchmans Cap, 2022
    Clifford How
    The Quartz Monolith – Frenchmans Cap, 2022
    oil on linen
    168.5 x 184 cm; 170.5 x 186 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Secretive, 2022
    Clifford How
    Secretive, 2022
    oil on linen
    168.5 x 123 cm; 170.5 x 125 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Materialize – Sharlands Peak, 2022
    Clifford How
    Materialize – Sharlands Peak, 2022
    oil on linen
    153 x 138 cm; 155 x 140 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Draped in Winter, 2022
    Clifford How
    Draped in Winter, 2022
    oil on linen
    137.5 x 153 cm; 139.5 x 155 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Liquid Braid – Central Plateau, 2022
    Clifford How
    Liquid Braid – Central Plateau, 2022
    oil on linen
    138 x 153 cm; 140 x 155 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Distant Shimmer – The Reappearing Lakes, 2022
    Clifford How
    Distant Shimmer – The Reappearing Lakes, 2022
    oil on linen
    97 x 87 cm; 99 x 89 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, The Summit in View – Pandani, 2022
    Clifford How
    The Summit in View – Pandani, 2022
    oil on linen
    87 x 97 cm; 89 x 99 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, The Days Final Act, 2022
    Clifford How
    The Days Final Act, 2022
    oil on linen
    82 x 87 cm; 84 x 89 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Finding Its Way – Myrtle Forest, 2022
    Clifford How
    Finding Its Way – Myrtle Forest, 2022
    oil on linen
    87 x 87 cm; 89 x 89 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Hidden Secrets, 2022
    Clifford How
    Hidden Secrets, 2022
    oil on board
    44 x 122 cm; 46 x 124 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Ethereal, 2022
    Clifford How
    Ethereal, 2022
    oil on linen
    66 x 61.5 cm; 68 x 63.5 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Ethereal II, 2022
    Clifford How
    Ethereal II, 2022
    oil on linen
    61.5 x 66.5 cm; 63.5 x 68.5 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Quiescent II, 2022
    Clifford How
    Quiescent II, 2022
    oil on linen
    61.5 x 66.5 cm; 63.5 x 68.5 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, The Little Creek Roared to Life After the Rain (Study), 2022
    Clifford How
    The Little Creek Roared to Life After the Rain (Study), 2022
    oil on board
    49 x 30 cm; 51 x 32 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, The Land Forms Gradually Emerged, 2022
    Clifford How
    The Land Forms Gradually Emerged, 2022
    oil on linen
    46.5 x 87 cm; 48.5 x 89 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Boundary – Waterfall Valley (Study), 2022
    Clifford How
    Boundary – Waterfall Valley (Study), 2022
    oil on board
    34 x 93 cm; 36 x 95 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Temperate Path – Myrtle Forest, 2022
    Clifford How
    Temperate Path – Myrtle Forest, 2022
    oil on linen
    56.5 x 51.5 cm; 58.5 x 53.5 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Atmospheric Realm, 2022
    Clifford How
    Atmospheric Realm, 2022
    oil on board
    55 x 50 cm; 57 x 52 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Last Kiss, 2022
    Clifford How
    Last Kiss, 2022
    oil on board
    50 x 55 cm; 52 x 57 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Light on the Walls, 2022
    Clifford How
    Light on the Walls, 2022
    oil on linen
    31 x 31 cm; 33 x 33 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Transient Light in Flux, 2022
    Clifford How
    Transient Light in Flux, 2022
    oil on linen
    31 x 31 cm; 33 x 33 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, The Days Final Act (Study), 2022
    Clifford How
    The Days Final Act (Study), 2022
    oil on linen
    31 x 31 cm; 33 x 33 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Fade and Reveal – Ada Lagoon, 2022
    Clifford How
    Fade and Reveal – Ada Lagoon, 2022
    oil on board
    30 x 33 cm; 32 x 35 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Draped in Winter (Study), 2022
    Clifford How
    Draped in Winter (Study), 2022
    oil on board
    29.5 x 34.5 cm; 31.5 x 36.5 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, The Sky Turned to Sapphire, 2022
    Clifford How
    The Sky Turned to Sapphire, 2022
    oil on board
    27 x 30 cm; 29 x 32 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Uncertainty, 2022
    Clifford How
    Uncertainty, 2022
    oil on board
    27 x 30 cm; 29 x 32 cm (framed)
    Sold
  • Clifford How, Ancient Stance, 2022
    Clifford How
    Ancient Stance, 2022
    oil on board
    30 x 32.5 cm; 32 x 34.5 cm (framed)
    Sold
Exhibition Text

Clifford How's newest series, 'Wild State', is a painterly ballad of Tasmania's ancient wilderness. As a fourth-generation Tasmanian, the variability - and volatility - of this island landscape is dear to the artist's heart, but this affiliation is not without a recognition of the colonial shadows that problematise the contemporary landscape and the history of landscape painting. How responds to this reality by re-wilding the landscape, erasing traces of humanity and restoring nature's sovereignty. 


In 'Wild State', How takes a retrospective look at subjects and motifs, and more importantly, emotional connections he has experienced within specific landscapes in previous years. He explains, "Re-examining these subjects with a clearer vision technically, and a much deeper sense of place, has clarified the purpose behind my creativity". For years he has been engrossed in Tasmania's ancient and fragile temperate rainforests, a time capsule ecosystem unchanged for eons. How's atmospheric forest interiors evoke the fragility of this environment - a subject that, he admits, has been more challenging than the open, light-filled scenes he usually paints. Pigments are applied with a palette knife passionately and intuitively, allowing scenes to surge out of frame and swell from the linen, pushing the formal limits of the canvas. This movement is met, in moments, with stillness and quietude, as How captures the rich multi-dimensionality of this primordial place.

 

How's paintings consciously and consistently blur the line between the seen and the unseen. The landscape is captured in recognisable form for a tangible visual experience, but the artist tempers this vision with what he terms "organic abstraction" to create space for emotive thoughts. A self-taught painter, he manipulates scenes captured as en plein air studies with profound sensitivity, tracing not only the anatomy of place but its sentiment and spirit. To truly capture the atmosphere, light and colour of the moment, How immerses himself in the landscape - journeying into the Central Plateau and Highlands and the Tarkine Wilderness and rainforest, with a bush swag and backpack full of paints, brushes, sketchbooks and small boards. In works such as Where Time Stands Still - Myrtle Forest and Secretive, How's mastery of light, texture and tone hatch a fragrant, damp atmosphere that can be discernibly felt and smelt. Mossy greens and icy greys create a sensorial briskness as the cool purity of the Tasmanian air fills our lungs. The viewer, solitary, is engulfed by the flora, diminutive and humbled. The crystalline skin of a cool stream conceals ancient secrets that the forest will never divulge, while trunks and roots spill off the canvas, reaching for things out of sight. This alluring current of mystery is continued in the panoramic work Hidden Secrets, where the forest's wisdom is etched into the sprawling mats of omniscient moss, and the eternal trees that watch on with a cavernous quietude, making us conscious of our own breath, our own heartbeat.


There is a coolness to the works in 'Wild State' - not merely weather-wise (certainly these landscapes dance between Winter and Spring), but the way they carry themselves slowly, quietly, sensitively. How's generous swathes of paint are scraped back in the foreground of Distant Shimmer - The Reappearing Lakes, demarcating the foliage and hinting at a personal process of revelation. In the distance, spectral lakes linger like apparitions on the verge of vanishing, melting into the mountains and sky with soft ethereality.   


Always devoid of people, or human indication, How's works are a meditation on our place in nature. They prompt us to contemplate, in the artist's words, how "we are very small in the scheme of things, and that these untamed places will exist beyond us. They demand to be cherished and protected."


Elli Walsh

Principle Writer, Artist Profile

Installation Views