Portraits by Howard Tangye
Born in 1948 in Queensland, Howard Tangye is an Australian illustrator, portraitist, and educator who has been an influential force in 
fashion design for decades. A figurative abstract artist, he is best known for his portraits executed in a mixture of oils, watercolors, pastels, inks and graphite.
Howard Tangye studied at London’s Saint Martins School of Art where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in Fashion and Textiles in 1974. He continued his studies at New York’s Parsons School of Art where he received in 1976 his postgraduate degree in Drawing. For seventeen years, Tangye was head of BA Fashion Design: Womenswear at Central Saint Martins where he taught such noted fashion designers as Wes Gordon, Stella McCartney, Christopher Kane, Zac Posen, and Hussein Chalayan.
Over the course of his teaching career, Tangye developed a distinctly characteristic art practice that employs decisive fine lines and the bold use of richly layered materials. His extensive study of the subtleties manifested in 
the human form provides the basis for rendering his subject’s intrinsic nature. Although Tangye’s work bears similarities to that of Egon Schiele, Tangye’s line-work has an intriguing lyrical nature in contrast to the raw intensity of Schiele’s expressionist lines.
Although a fashion tutor with an extensive knowledge of textiles and textures, Howard Tangye does not define himself as a fashion illustrator. What he finds most interesting is drawing the sitter, not the clothes worn. Tangye draws those with whom he has developed a connection. Because of this, his vibrant works offer the viewer an insight into the sitter’s mind and personality. Tangye will often, in the same work, depict the sitter three or four times, each image slightly altered or shifted in position. Previous depictions of the sitter are not removed but drawn over. This practice of leaving alterations visible in the finished work is known in Italian as pentimenti, or repentance.
Tangye has been exhibited his work in many group and solo shows. From 1991 to 2001, he regularly exhibited at the charity auction at the Royal College of Art for St. Christopher’s Children’s Hospice. He has exhibited at the Lethaby Gallery of Central Saint Martins; Galerie Dessers in Leuven, Belgium; 
the John Soane Museum and the Amar Gallery in London; and the 2020 Armory Show in New York, among others. In 2013, the Victoria and Albert Museum selected fifty-six of Howard Tangye’s original works for their permanent collection. In 2014, London’s Hus Gallery hosted a solo exhibition, entitled “Casting the Line”, that contained twenty-five works created by Tangye created over a span of twenty years.
In addition to private collections and the Victoria and Albert Museum, Howard Tangye has work in London’s National Portrait Gallery and in the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of Harvard University at Cambridge, Massachusetts. His 2013 art book “Within” was released through a Kickstarter campaign and was completely sold out within a year. A second edition was released, with some small design changes, in 2020 through the publisher “Stinsensqueeze.
Howard Tangye’s website is located at: https://howardtangye.com
Top Insert Image: Adam Rogers, “Howard Tangye”, 2023, Photo Shoot for Water Journal, Volume 5°, London, United Kingdom
Second Insert Image: Howard Tangye, “In the Garden There Was a Lemon Tree”, 2018, Mixed Media on Bockingford Paper, 153 x 122 cm
Bottom Insert Image: Howard Tangye, “Mike (Writing at the Studio Table)”, 1988-1989, Mixed Media on Pergamenata Paper, 100 x 70 cm
