Behrens, Howard

Howard Chesner Behrens has an interest in art that dates back to his childhood when he turned to painting to fill the hours in bed convalescing from a broken leg. Born in 1933 in Chicago, Behrens was raised in a suburb of Washington DC. After a stint in the military he attended junior college where encouragement from a professor led him to explore the field of medical art.

After obtaining a BA from the University of Maryland, he entered the Medical Arts School of John Hopkins University in Baltimore. Although the highly technical demands of medical art were good discipline for him, he found that this type of illustration did not lie in his heart. He returned to University of Maryland where he obtained a Masters Degree in painting and sculpture.

Behrens was employed by the US Government Printing Office in Washington DC from 1964-1981 serving as their chief artist for over 10 years. He experimented with many techniques of painting but adopted his powerful paette knife style in 1976.

“Before I rarely painted with the palette knife possibly due to the difficulty in control and my affinity for the representational. I had been mixing paints more and more with the palett knife and began to realize the true value in using it in place of the brush.”

Howard Behrens is known for his palette knife style landscapes of his many and varied travels. He rarely includes figuratives in his works allowing the scenes to remain the highlight of his imagery.

Central Galleries mourns the passing of artist Howard Behrens on April 14,2014. We have been representing and selling his artwork since 1987.

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