Reflections of Venice
18th Fairway at Castle Harbor
Menaggio
Devonshire
Normandy
Hillside at Fira
Cap Roux
Seaside
Howard Chesner Behrens has an interest in art that dates to his childhood, when he turned to painting to fill the hours in bed convalescing from a broken leg. After a stint in the military, he attended junior college where encouragement from a professor led him to explore the field of medical art.
After obtaining the prerequisites and a BA from the University of Maryland, Behrens entered the Medical Arts School of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Although the highly technical demands of medical art were good discipline for him, he found that medical illustration was not where his main interest lie. He returned to the University of Maryland to obtain a Masters Degree in painting and sculpture.
In addition to his absorption in painting, Behrens was employed by the U.S. Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C. from 1964 – 1981, serving as their chief artist for ten years. During this period he experimented with various painting styles. It was in 1976, after a trip to the West Coast, that Behrens reached a major turning point… the adoption of his powerful palette-knife style.
Behrens explains: “Before then I rarely painted with a palette-knife… possibly because of the difficulty in control and my affinity for the representational. I had been mixing paints more and more with the palette knife and began to realize the true value in using it in place of the brush. Since then, I have used only a palette-knife. Looking back I cannot believe it took so long to discover this. It is as though my paintings suddenly became alive.”
Inspiration for Behrens comes mainly from his extensive travels. “During the summer months I would travel the East Coast beaches and bay areas looking for inspiration,” he remarks. “It seems the warm climate and bright sunlight affected my style and choice of subject matter significantly.”
Whatever his subject matter, Behrens is presenting a world of physical beauty. Bathed in sunlight and touched by sea breezes, it is a world where man and nature exist in perfect harmony. And it is a world towards which more and more collectors of fine art are drawn, discovering there in the artwork of Howard Behrens, unlimited visual pleasure. For Howard Behrens, art is an expression of his love affair with life. Brilliantly infused with sparkling color, the art of Behrens conveys his belief that “these are the best of times.”
Collectors and critics have responded with equal enthusiasm to the art of Howard Behrens, and he is fast becoming acknowledged as one of our most important contemporary artists. Since 1981, when Behrens plunged full time into his career as an artist, his one’ man shows have been virtual sellouts, with the prices of his original painting today commanding between $10,000 - $35,000. Now with the publication of his serigraphs, an even greater audience will be able to collect and enjoy the work of this outstanding artist.