Debra Howard

Debra Howard has been an artist and adventurer her entire life. She spent her childhood in Miami, Florida, where she first discovered her love an air with color, light, painting, and sailing. She studied at Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, and began her art career in San Francisco, where she opened her first illustration studio. After 17 years as a successful illustrator, she closed her studio to concentrate on fine art painting. “I realized that the career I had found so satisfying was being taken over by the computer. I missed the feel of the brush on canvas.

In response, she provisioned her Peterson 44 sailboat with art supplies, her old dog and her 4 year old daughter and began cruising. After almost 27 years of travelling, sailing and painting aboard, Ling Ling, she has come ashore and has turned her creative focus to painting the Eastern Shore and the Leelanau and Old Mission Peninsula in northern Michigan.

Her introduction to the Eastern Shore came by way of Tangier Island. A tiny, remote island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. She lived there for 3 years, as the artist-in-residence and then as the Executive Director for the Tangier History Museum. She accomplished the task of painting a painting a day to document the seasons and changes on this disappearing island. Her work was featured in The American Scholar Magazine. The experience changed her; “I paint now with more energy, passion and immediacy,” Howard says, “which coincidentally reflect the very nature of the island. The island is raw.”

After years of travelling and painting from a sailboat she switched from sailing to camping. “I now travel from April to November exploring and participating in Plein Air events in my little RV trailer with emphasis on northern Michigan.

Debra has been juried into (and won) Plein Air competitions in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, Maine, Georgia, Delaware, New Jersey, Tennessee, Indiana, Texas, Louisiana and Virginia, including prestigious events such as Easton Plein Air, Paint Annapolis, en Plein Air Texas and Bath County Plein Air. She is a Signature Member of the Mid-Atlantic Plein Air Painters Association (MAPAPA), Northport Arts Association, Glen Arbor Art Association, Crooked Tree Arts Center and the Somerset County Arts Council.

Artist-in-Residence for: Tangier Island, VA, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Big Cypress National Preserve, Everglades, Florida and the South Carolina State Parks..

Her work as been featured in the American Scholar Magazine and Plein Air Magazine as well as numerous newspaper articles. She travels through the year, pulling a small RV trailer, competing in plein air competitions around the country and offering art workshops and artists talks.