Rachel Howard

Rachel Howard (born 1969) is a British artist. Early life and career Rachel Howard grew up on a farm in Easington, County Durham. She attended The Mount School, York a Quaker school from the age of sixteen and the stories, concerns and questions raised by religion have had a profound effect on her work throughout her career.I went to a Quaker school and it had such a powerful effect on my life that I've carried it with me ever since. I'm an atheist now but Quakerism was the first time as a child I came across a religious structure that made some sense … the silence, contemplation, the acknowledgement of our responsibilities not just to each other but also to nature, they are pacifists. I was quite unruly as a child — Quakerism makes you take responsibility for your own actions without being heavy-handed, it's subtle and beautiful. The Quakers believe in celebrating the light within, it'll come as no surprise that James Turrell is a Quaker, for example.Howard graduated from Goldsmiths College, London, in 1991. In 1992, Howard was awarded the Prince's Trust Award to support her art practice. She received the British Council Award in 2008, and in 2004 was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize. Late one night in 1988, the 19-year-old Rachel Howard was waiting for a bus outside London’s Goldsmiths College with a stack of her paintings, having spent the evening in the student union bar, when she was approached by two scruffy characters offering to carry the canvases back to her digs. One of which was Damien Hirst. Howard gets asked all the time about Hirst, who she met at Goldsmith’s College, in London, as they have played an important part in each other’s early careers. “We were mates and he needed someone to paint spots, and I was waitressing and I didn’t want a proper job – so I ended up working for him to earn enough money to make my own work,” she says. “It was a very good symbiotic relationship.”