Deborah Howard: Gloaming

Gloaming (noun): the low light that is seen in the evening as the sun sets. The Cape Cod landscape is rarely static; it exists in the shifts between light and land, fog and water. My paintings inhabit Gloam—that heavy, transitional twilight where the physical world dissolves into memory and atmosphere. Working with a palette of muted grays and coastal fogs, my process mimics the erosion of the coast itself. I build up dense, opaque layers of paint, only to scrape them away, sand them down, and reapply the medium. I allow the paint to drip and pool, capturing the fluid tension of a landscape governed by unseen forces. These abstract pieces are not direct translations of specific shores, but rather the sediment of my own experiences living on the Cape. They are tactile records of time, weather, and memory—capturing the quiet weight of a coast shrouded in mist.