Dan Howard who?
Over the past few months, I have shared a few stories from one of our contributors Viroqua, WI artist Dan Howard. It seems whenever I share his writings, insights and amazing artwork, our readership goes bonkers, but in a good way.
Over my short fifty years here on Mother Earth, Creator has put many people in my life, and this would include Dan. Normally I would refer to him by his last name, but this writing is a bit more personal.
I met Dan about a year ago while working as the editor of a small Driftless newspaper. Dealing with him on a professional level, I quickly became comfortable with Dan enough to share a bit about who I was and my story. Dan is so easy to talk to, and has a good spirit, one that is clearly non-judgmental.
This past spring, I resigned my editor position and was crushed in doing so. I had become so attached to the community, and had made many friends that seemed to enjoy my stories even though some could be quite lengthy.
Not seeing eye to eye with my publisher on several issues, I felt morally and creatively that I had no other options. For three days I was depressed, angry, and drained.
I called up Dan to tell him that I had resigned. His response, WHAT!? Why!? After about a half an hour explaining my reasons, Dan completely understood and supported my decision.
Dan told me, you don’t need to work for someone else, you need to start up your own website that tells the stories in the Driftless. This perked my interest and I could see the light bulb brighten.
Dan continued to tell me that as far as he knew, no one out there was telling the stories about the Driftless, at least without having a bottom-line focus on tourism. He encouraged me and said, “You can do this!” And there was the proverbial gas thrown on the fire. Whoosh, Driftless Now was born.
See, I had Dan on speaker phone during our hour and a half long conversation, so my wife Amanda could hear the honest and human support that Dan was affording me. She seemed all the while to get excited and in deep thought, maybe in the idea of her and I running this business as a team.
The next day found Amanda and I brainstorming, planning, and dreaming. It was down right exciting and my depression and sadness was lifted. But wait, what would we call this new venture?
Amanda came up with a few names for our website/business that we would run as a dba under our LLC Arentz You Smiling. We even enlisted my mother to brainstorm names. After a few days, the time had come to vote on all the names we had come up with. After several attempts to whittle them down to one without success, mom’s frustration grew. Finally, mom could no longer contain herself, and waving her hands around said, “I don’t know what to call it. Just call it, I don’t know, Driftless Now or something.” With silence being louder than a freight train, Amanda and I looked at each other and then mom. We smiled, and I said I liked it, a lot! The rest, let’s just say it’s history in the making.
Ops, back to Dan. Not only has dan been a great true friend, but he is an amazing artist. He is a talented painter (as you already know), photographer, and musician (guitar). He is a good family man. He is a doting husband and father, hard worker, and just an all around great human being, even if he was born in Britain. It should be mentioned that a few months ago, Dan became a full-blown legal citizen of the United States of America, so I guess he’s an alright guy.
Dan Howard inspires me in so many ways, and inspires me to be a better human being. For that I am forever grateful.
The following is a piece titled “My background” from his website artofdanhoward.com. It shares some of his personal background and journey as an artist. If you haven’t visited his sight listed in past pieces we republished, I encourage a visit. You will not be disappointed.
My background -Dan Howard
It seems like I have always created. As a child, I would sit at the feet of my great Uncle Dennis. He was an incredibly skilled illustrator and one of the kindest, most modest individuals I have ever met. His simple approach to creating art was an inspiration to me throughout my childhood. He would sit in his chair by the window, sketchbooks and tins of pencils at his feet, and he would draw. He would draw anything, scenes from birthday cards, cartoon characters or nude women from the national tabloid papers. I’d visit him weekly. My Granddad had passed away and me, my Mum, Nanna and my sister would make weekly visits to the cemetery to tend to his grave. Afterwards, we would always stop by my Aunty Rita’s house for a break. My uncle Dennis was married to my Aunty Rita, sister to my Nanna. Uncle Dennis was a gentle soul. Always seated in the chair next to the window with his legs casually crossed and a sketchbook on his lap. His hair would be swept back in a “teddy-boy” style. Every time I walked in that room; I would immediately look over his shoulder to see what he was drawing. While my Mum, Nanna and sister would chat with my Aunty Rita, I’d sit at his feet with one of his pencils and a sheet from his sketchbook. He’d flick through some of the things he had finished recently and we’d all sit there talking about how he really should get these in an exhibition. He would always chuckle and brush it off. He wasn’t anything special, at least in his eyes. I feel I owe much of my creative passion to him. His modest approach to his craft. His relaxed personality. His huge volume of work. It seemed like he was always drawing because he truly enjoyed it and never thought he was somebody. But to me, he was inspiration itself. Throughout the years that followed, I spent so much of my time creating. I would draw, I would paint, I would learn origami, I even tried my hand at Chinese brush painting. Even throughout my school days I would spend my lunchtimes and break times in the art classroom creating and finishing projects. I was an art geek. Since then, I’ve turned my hand to many creative endeavors including traditional and digital mediums but it is in oil painting that I have found the most freedom.
I hope I have answered the title question “Dan Howard, who?”.
