Welcome to Howard Weingarden's Studio

     I met Howard nearly forty years ago, in 1964. His studio was in the "Castle," and he sang with Wagner records all night long as he painted. Although Howard has grown immeasurably over the decades, he still retains the same concept now as he did then -- "permeable consciousness" as he calls it.

     Here's how it works: you see a figure standing before you, but is it solid? Not in Weingarden's universe. The figure is permeated by another landscape, another dimension, perhaps with elf-like creatures jumping back and forth from one world to another; perhaps it is not the figure that's so important, but the aura surrounding it, or the mythological beings that breathe life-energy into it. With a solid foundation in the style of the old masters (particularly Rembrandt), Howard is comfortable in the world of abstract as well, and yet, his universe is not abstract, but real and permeable -- this is the vision he gives to you, the viewer of his art, to perceive.

     Howard's insistence on portraying the multi-dimensional has rankled academics, instructors and gallery-owners alike. Yet, there was one in New York, a gallery owner named C.C. Price, who took a liking to him. In the late sixties, she gave him the tip of his life: "Paint not for awe," she said, "but for Om!" She explained how many painters would come and go, hanging fantastic works in her gallery, drawing a sense of awe and spectacle from their beholders, but few painters would be capable of creating art that generates a sense of resonance in viewers -- she saw this potentiality in Howard.

     Many years later, after countless evolutions of style, Weingarden has succeeded in realizing that dream. The paintings and drawings have migrated from a "mental" perspective to a "physical" one. By "mental," I mean: you see a line drawn through a figure -- then that's your cue to mentally assume another dimension. The physical perspective, on the other hand, allows your eyes to roam through the painting and discover those dimensions, visionary landscapes, etc., as much as you care to see. For example, in "The Child With Fairys," if you stand far enough back from the painting, the center of it looks like an abstraction -- but as you move toward the painting, the abstraction becomes a being with a hidden universe inside. These are revelatory or exploratory works, allowing you to develop your own sense of other dimensions in imagination -- wherever your eyes will take you.

      Much of Weingarden's works are digital. He claims that the computer is a breakthrough tool for contemporary artists, as much as the invention of tube paints was, for 19th century painters. Watching him work at it -- I can't disagree. Among all the other benefits, the ability to integrate material by cutting and pasting allows him a complete picture in minutes or hours, what would take weeks or months by painting and re-painting on canvas. Once he's finished integrating on the "tube," he also has the option to use it as he would a model, for another work on canvas.

     Finally, Weingarden has developed so many works on the computer that it's impossible to represent them all in one sitting. This first presentation is a mere sampling of what he has. Once in a while, we'll change the scenery and present a different theme -- watch for them: "The Extraterrestrial Art of H.W.," "H.W. on Jazz," "Time and the Eternal Now," "Urban Archtypes," etc. In fact, Howard has a series of 3-D digital art, and if we could figure out how to get 3-D goggles to everyone, we'd present that as well. For now, we bring you the permeable consciousness of H.W. on demand -- his information age offerings on the World Wide Web.

-- James Semark, January, 2004

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