About Josh

Josh Howatt is an abstract mixed-media artist based in Austin, Texas, originally from Orange County, California, by way of New York City. Self-taught, he works in acrylic, plaster, collage, and mixed materials on canvas, and his practice splits into two distinct visual languages.

The first is meditative and repetitive. These pieces are built up in plaster and acrylic, dense with texture, and organized around a single motif repeated across the surface—circles, X’s, or other simple forms that accumulate into something almost hypnotic. The process is slow and deliberate; each mark is a small act of attention, and the finished surface reads as both object and record of that repetition.

The second is newer and more architectural. These works lean geometric yet still somehow organic—bold horizontal bands, stacked color fields, hard edges—rendered in the palette of the desert: ochre, dusty pink, gray, and wide stretches of cerulean. The imagery draws on Texas and California landscapes: storm clouds, drought, sparse figures moving through arid ground. Titles like Cumulonimbus, After a Decade’s Worth of Drought, and How I Imagine Marfa TX Although I’ve Never Been, anchor the abstraction in specific weather and place.

Across both styles, themes of loss, healing, and identity run underneath.  Josh’s practice is about building surfaces that hold both the weight of what they’re about and the physical evidence of how they were made.