In an interview before his death, 

 Howell defined it this way: "What 

 makes art art? ... It is not simply copying 

 what you see. That is reporting. You've 

 got to know about why you paint. If you 

 paint a man mending a net, you had 

 better know how to mend a net." 



Howell's importance as a regional 

 artist is also introduced. The artist is a 

 historian, commenting on the sociology 

 as well as the economics of the time as 

 he lives it, or perhaps even as he 

 remembers it from his youth. 



Glielmi uses terminology these 

 young students can relate to. "Claude 

 Howell's pictures were like a Kodak 

 moment," she says. "He was capturing 

 in his pictures bits and pieces of the life 

 of the commercial fisherman, of the 

 history of the fishing industry, because 



he was concerned that maybe 10, 50 

 years from now there may not be as 

 much commercial fishing the way he 

 grew up knowing about it on the coast 

 of North Carolina. He was giving us 

 little historical glimpses of what the 

 coast was all about." 



Though his fame goes far beyond 

 the boundaries of this state, Howell was 

 first and foremost a product of the 

 coastal environment. However, he was 

 not fond of being termed a regional 

 artist. "I'm very much influenced by my 

 surroundings because it's what I know 

 and what I like. I paint the recognizable, 

 but mainly the abstracted. I try to get the 

 essence of the place rather than the way 

 it looks," he said. And he added, "But 

 yes, I paint a regional picture." 



The artist was the only child of 



Claude Flynn and Jessie Campbell 

 Howell. He was born on March 17, 

 1915, in the Carolina Apartments in 

 Wilmington, one floor above the 

 apartment that would become his home 

 for most of his life. He cherished the 

 view from his window overlooking the 

 downtown area and preferred that 

 location to any other in town. 



As a young boy, hunting and 

 fishing expeditions with his father 

 became occasions to study wildflowers 

 and birds and nature. His father was 

 soon convinced that his son's first love 

 was art. Both of his parents did every- 

 thing possible to encourage this passion. 

 When he was 17, his father died of a 

 heart attack. The circumstances of the 

 Great Depression forced his mother to 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 15 



