A colorful collection

Everyone tells Judy Howard they know the locations featured in her art. The trees, the barns and the dirt roads all look so familiar. In some cases, they might be right. Howard doesn’t always recall the exact Ozark locations she and her husband Mose discover on their drives through the area.

“They look familiar,” Howard said. “And that’s exactly what I want someone to get from them.”

She paints what she sees.

“It’s not the Grand Canyon, but it’s what we have here,” Howard said.

Howard’s collection of pastel works indeed capturesthe subtleties of the surrounding landscape.

Her works focus on wildflowers bending in the wind, deep ruts carved into mud roads and lonely trees in farm fields.

“I call them quiet places, simple little scenes that people pass by,” she said.

Her recent images in that vein will surface in a new show called just that - “Quiet Places II.” The show goes up Wednesday at the Bentonville Convention and Visitors Bureau. It bears the numeral because this is her second Northwest Arkansas show, after a solo exhibit at the Arts Center of the Ozarks this time last year.

Eve Smith, director of visual arts for the arts center, discovered Howard through an Ozark Pastel Society show at ACO. She too finds the familiar.

“I fell in love with her work. … It could be any place. It could be a place in Louisiana where I grew up,” Smith said.

Howard sold much of the work she brought to the show, Smith added.

Howard’s forays into pastels follow a long career as an art educator and watercolor artist. Originally from Fort Smith, Howard taught art at Van Buren Junior High. She later taught continuing education classes at Westark College - now the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith - and hosted art classes from her garage studio. Early in her career, she dabbled in pastels.

“I didn’t like it at all,” she said.

Later, after she moved to Fayetteville to take a job as graphic designer and project manager for the University of Arkansas, she connected with several local art clubs, including the Artists of Northwest Arkansasand the Ozark Pastel Society. Inspired by those she met, she tried pastels again. She took classes locally from the likes of Jack Hetterich, formerly of Bella Vista, and also from nationally known pastel artist Liz Haywood Sullivan.

It was the latter, who serves as the president of the International Association of Pastel Societies, that sent out a call for submissions that would earn Howard international attention. Howard doesn’t always apply for shows, mostly because there is no guarantee. Two years ago, for instance, she earned top honors at the Artists of Northwest Arkansas’ annual show. Last year, she wasn’t even accepted into the show.

But because she’d established a connection with Sullivan, she sent in her piece “Tracks & Shadows,” an image that, like many of her works, finds literal representation in the title. In the wintertime scene, a mud road, carved by a vehicle during some past rainstorm, twists upward while long afternoon shadows cut angles across the surface.

Howard said the composition of the piece is its strength, and she suspects that’s what the jury noticed in accepting it into the IAPS show.

“It was the biggest number of entries they’ve ever had,” Howard said. “I didn’t expect anything, but I sure was excited.”

She’s at a bit of a stopping point now, though her middle bedroom remains a studio and her living room doubles as a frame shop, with her husband’s assistance.

But as the rush to frame enough works to hang in Bentonville is complete, Howard will resume work in pastels. She hopes to create a series of abstracts in the near future.