Clay Howard

Clay Howard (Royal College of Art, UK / Art Students League, NY / Lewis and Clark College, OR) is a San Francisco Bay Area born painter currently living in London. His satirical paintings reflect contemporary culture, as they expose the absurdity of human behaviour. His display of reptilian cartoon characters, scaly and green, embodies the outer skin humans use to present themselves to society.

His previous experiences include interning at The Aperture Foundation for the Steven A. Baron Work Scholar program in New York, and as the lead Graphic Designer for the 10th issue of Beacon Quarterly Magazine in Portland, Oregon. This knowledge has brought an aspect of photographic composition, magazine culture, and storytelling into his visual language.

While travelling through India, he was told by his friends that “Clay’ in Hindi translated to “Slippery Dirt”. Ever since, he has used the pseudonym Slippery Dirt satirically, as a play on his name and as a magazine title alluding to the New Yorker.

We are all fictional characters of our own making, no different from the characters out of a novel or cartoon. The clothes that we wear tells a story of how we want to be perceived by others.

My paintings take a sideways look at group dynamics, non-verbal interactions, and inflated personas that occur in social settings. I find humour in the subtle social cues I observe when in public. Sidelong glances, furrowed brows, eye rolls, and blank stares tell an unspoken story for the observer to decipher. It is in these diminutive expressions that our true pettiness and vanity is disclosed. My cartoon characters, therefore, reveal humanity in its most real form, stripped away from any human semblance leaving only the outer skin and clothing we present to the world.

I do not wish to make satire which is ostensibly political or hard edged, but rather, ‘kind satire’ in the tradition of Jane Austen. I am interested in observing and understanding people and culture through my humorous artworks. The intent of my work is for the viewer to recognize themselves in these characters and moreover laugh at their own follies and absurdities

“The only person you’re deceiving is yourself.”

― Kevin Kwan, Sex and Vanity