The Road to Positano by Howard Behrens Hand Embellished Giclee on canvas Dimensions: 16 x 20 Edition: D13/100 Release: 2004 Current Price: $2,300.00
Born in Chicago, Illinois and raised near Washington, D.C., Howard
Behrens grew up during the 1930's and 40's. His father was a printer,
and his mom an artistic soul with a flair for design. From the time he
received his first water-color set in third grade, young Behrens enjoyed
painting, known as "the Artist" in school where he contributed artwork
to the newspaper and yearbook. A sledding accident at the age of
seventeen kept him bed-ridden for months - during which time he decided
to be an artist for good. He went on to earn a Master's degree in
painting and sculpture from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Throughout a long career as a government graphic artist, Behrens also
traveled extensively and continued to develop his talent and explore new
techniques, especially inspired by exotic tropical locales, and the
quite different beauty of European architecture.
Behrens is
one of the world's most renowned palette artists, inspired to create his
many masterpieces with a palette knife - a tool artists traditionally
use to mix oil paints before applying them to canvas with a paint brush.
"I kept changing my style," he explains. "I feel like every painting is
a prerequisite for the next painting. You come across something that
really rings a bell and starts you thinking differently, and you
continue on with that new technique, style or subject matter. That's how
I eventually got into palette knife painting. It was an evolutionary
thing."
This evolution to today's rich, distinctive, texturized
style has garnered Behrens numerous accolades and honors, including an
appointment as an official artist of the 2002 Winter Olympics and the
acceptance of many of his pieces into permanent museum archives around
the world. Experimentation, says this modern master, is crucial to his
success. "I slowly started using the palette knife to paint on the
canvas, starting out very fine and thin...then, it got thicker and
heavier. Finally, the most amazing thing happened: the act of painting
became the subject matter."
Behrens approaches his creations
with what he calls "controlled spontaneity." He can find worthwhile
subject matter wherever he goes, armed with a camera and sketch pad at
all times. Back in the studio, images and ideas come together, and
sometimes Behrens finds himself applying paint with a palette knife, and
other times he'll splash paint onto a canvas and create art by removing
it with the knife. In his work are reflections of such artists as
Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisely, and
Italian palette knife painter Nicola Simbari. At heart, Behrens
considers himself an expressionist who has integrated the spontaneous
nature of the Impressionist painters.
Often called the "Monet of
the 21st Century", Behrens is also a pioneer of the hand-embellished
serigraph print. By the early 1980's, his career was really taking off -
galleries and exhibition shows from Palm Beach, Florida to 5th Avenue,
Manhattan to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills were featuring Behrens richly
textured, distinctive palette-knife technique to rave reviews. In light
of this success, he began publishing limited edition serigraphs with the
added feature of personally had-embellishing each print. It was his
ability to work quickly and decisively with his trusty knife that made
these creations truly unique, yet available to a much wider fan base of
eager collectors.
In 2000, Behrens created a collection of
works inspired by Monet's gardens in Giverny, France entitled "A Tribute
to Monet." The show was exhibited at the French Embassy in Washington,
D.C. in October 2001, and a series of limited-edition prints were
created from that collection.
Also a top-selling artist on
Princess Cruise Lines, Behrens enjoyed making many in-house artist
appearances on art-themed cruises and Connoisseur's Cruises until his
semi-retirement in 2011, due to Parkinson's Disease. The spacious manor
that was private studio and home to Behrens and his wife for many years
was known as "Villa Behrens" and was featured in many design magazines
and on HGTV - it was designed and built as a reflection of the artist's
multitude of paintings. It was sold in 2011, but lives on in pictures on
the Behrens' website, put up in answer to the demand of his many fans.
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