“Snow Falling on Hurley Flats” by Judy Howard

This exquisite original pastel by Judy Howard of Hurley Flats (off Route 209 in the Town of Hurley) is set in winter.  The pastel is double matted and framed (silver metal) under glass.  The frame is wired and ready to hang on the wall.

Judy Howard is an artist who works in soft pastels and watercolor and specializes in landscape painting. Her pastel paintings portray scenes around northwest Arkansas or the Hudson Valley in New York, scenes that she likes to call the quiet places — a field along an old highway, the edge of a pond, an old gravel road, a small creek — scenes that people drive by and don’t notice much. She is attracted to the way light hits objects and textures in those simple scenes, evoking emotional responses, moods, and memories.

Howard, a native of Fort Smith, Ark., received a B.A. in Art Education from Arkansas Tech University and taught art at Van Buren Junior High School briefly before opening a home studio, where she taught art classes for several years. She also taught drawing and watercolor classes for adults and children for 13 years in the continuing education program at Westark College, now University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. She then worked as a designer in their publications department for eight years before moving to Fayetteville, Ark., in 1998. She was a graphic designer and project manager for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture for 18 years, designing publications of all types and displays for both the Division and Bumpers College.

In 2018, she and her husband moved to the Kingston, N.Y., area where she currently works in her home art studio. She is currently a member of the Pastel Society of America, Wallkill River Center for the Arts, Ozark Pastel Society, the Lower Hudson Valley Plein Air Painters. 

Howard participated in numerous shows in Arkansas through the years, winning awards for both watercolor and pastel paintings. Some of her awards for pastel paintings include Best of Drawing/Pastel in the Artists of Northwest Arkansas’ 23rd Annual Regional Art Exhibition 2017; First Place in the Heart of America Artists Association’s Illinois River Salon 2016; Best of Show and 2nd Place in Miniatures in the Ozark Pastel Society Open Art Exhibition 2015; Best of Show and 1st Place in both the Landscape and Abstract categories in the Ozark Pastel Society Open Art Exhibition 2014; Best of Show in the 18th Annual ANA Regional Exhibition at the Arts Center of the Ozarks in August 2012.

She has also had paintings juried into international pastel shows such as the the 37th International Association of Pastel Societies (IAPS) Web Show 2020; the 2019 and 2020 Pastel Society of America (PSA) 47th and 48th Annual Exhibition: “Enduring Brilliance!” (New York City and online: bit.ly/3Ffqp5Pf); the 26th IAPS PastelWorld Exhibition 2015 (Albuquerque, N.M.); and the IAPS 23rd Juried Exhibition Web Show 2013 (online: https://tinyurl.com/y6nuk5ar).

Howard has had solo exhibits of her pastel paintings at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith in May-July 2017; the Center for Art and Education in Van Buren, Ark. in May 2016; the Bentonville Convention and Visitors Bureau in Bentonville, Ark., in April 2014; and the Arts Center of the Ozarks, in Springdale, Ark., in April 2013.

She has studied pastels in workshops with Liz Haywood-Sullivan, Marlene Wiedenbaum, Michele Wells, Kim Casebeer, Lorenzo Chavez, Denise Larue Mahlke, Jack Hetterich, Judy Maurer, and Charles Peer.

--Judyhowardfineart.com

Dimensions:  14” x 16” with the frame; Image is 8.5 “ x 10.5”

Donated by Judy Howard