persistent effigies

Digital Art by Howard Skrill

Artist’s Statement:

Using vigorous marking honed in years of plein-air drawings of figurative monuments, I explore in paintings, plein-air drawings, studio works on paper, installation and pictorial essays, the remarkable fate of effigies in our times. These works are a meditation on effigies’ impact on the erasure of public and private memory and identity including rebellion against these impositions. Additionally I explore the persistence of effigies despite such intervention.

Met bust with horns (side view), 13 1/2" x 17", (at greatest length) gouache, pencil, acrylic and screws on board and paper, 2026

Kongo with sword and other man (sideview), 23" x 8 1/4", gouache, pencil, acrylic and screws on board, 2025

Dyker mashed head 1 (sideview), 15 x 19 1/2", (at greatest length), gouache, pencil, acrylic on paper mounted on board with screws, 2025

Paris Monument with cloaked figure on top, 23" x 30", gouache and pencil on paper, 2023

Three busts (Met), 24" x 16 1/2", acrylic, gouache, pencil and china marker on canvas, 2025

Photo of Howard Skrill

BIO: Howard Skrill is an artist/educator and a long-term resident of Brooklyn, NY with a BFA from Suny-Purchase and an MFA from CUNY-Queens College. He instructs college students of Brooklyn and Newark in studio arts and art survey. His art project, the Anna Pierrepont Series, is included in a variety of solo and group exhibitions, nationwide, and also been included as the covers and in the interior of numerous magazines.