‘Birthday Boar Hunt’

Kate Howe, 2024, oil on linen. 160cm x 280cm.

"Birthday Boar Hunt is the fourth painting to emerge in Howe's body of work, which at this point begins to have a name: All of the Suzannas. The name emerges after four years of researching Susanna and the Elders (starting with Gentileschi's 1610 image). In fragmenting time via breaking the frozen record of violence (the image beneath) with the tumbling, twisting motion of the hunt, the battle, the progress of power across the landscape of Rubens and Titian, the image below becomes unstable, freed into the now.

A trembling occurs, a collapsing of time, a simultaneity calling forth all of the Susannas, pulling the voices, the images, the unspoken and unshared moments of violence, pressing this shared trauma through the voice of the painting. In this impossible compression comes the Rupture, the fracture, and the loss of the individual story into the violent torrent of all of our voices…”

- Excerpts from Kate Howe’s writing. Read more on Howe’s Substack.