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Brenda Howell
North Rim Tree 30x40 Oil $12,000. Toroweap 40x30 Oil $12,000.
North Rim Tree 30x40 Oil $12,000.
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Brenda began her love affair with the Grand
Canyon on Thanksgiving Day in 1970 when she and
her sister first hiked five miles down the
Bright Angel Trail to Indian Gardens. It was a
life-changing experience on many levels. Ten
years later, when she began painting again she
made her first painting of the Canyon and it has
been a dominant theme of her art throughout her
painting life. Art was a very important
part of her early years. Her mother, while
teaching private art classes, encouraged Brenda
to paint her first oil painting at age five.
This early introduction to the process of
sketching and outdoor painting was instrumental
to her interest in and love of landscape. One of
her fondest childhood memories is of a trip to
Rocky Mountain National Park where her mother
painted outdoors at Bear Lake. Her mother also
taught her to draw her own paper dolls and paper
doll clothes, complete with tabs. She
graduated with a B.A. from California State
University at Fullerton, and studied art at
Orange Coast College, Fullerton College, Tulsa
Community College, Philbrook Art Museum School
and Scottsdale Artists’ School. She has always
studied the art of master painters in art
museums, being particularly inspired by Thomas
Moran, Gunnar Widforss, Carl Oscar Borg, Georgia
O’Keeffe, Edgar Payne, Birger Sandzen and
Maynard Dixon.
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Brenda worked more than twenty years
as a Graphic Designer and Technical/
Geological Illustrator, which led to
a successful freelance business. But
fine art kept calling her. After
spending a year in India and
traveling in Europe and Australia,
Brenda decided to immerse herself in
her favorite place to paint, the
Grand Canyon. She came to live at
the South Rim of Grand Canyon
National Park in 1999 and stayed for
four years. In the tradition of
Gunnar Widforss and other artists
that made Grand Canyon home, this
experience transformed her work and
her life. It was at Grand
Canyon that she found a great
response to her paintings, which are
now in many collections in the U.S.
and abroad. Brenda began painting
full-time in 2003. Now based in
Northern New Mexico, she travels and
paints throughout the west. She
paints primarily in oil, both
outdoors and in the studio. |
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Recent Awards
2008/2009 — ARC Staff Award, Art Renewal
Center’s International 2008/2009 ARC Salon™,
www.artrenewal.org
2007 —
Southwest Art Magazine Award, Salon
International 2007, Greenhouse Gallery, San
Antonio, TX
2007 — Phillip G. Paratore Jr. Memorial
Award, National Society of Artists, 23rd
National Juried Show, Houston, TX
2005 — Merit Award, American Women Artists
Annual Juried Exhibition, Texas Art
Gallery, Dallas, TX
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