Ghislaine Howard’s portrait of Wayne Rooney has been featured in the Manchester Evening News in a promotional piece for the Gateway Gallery.
“A portrait of an angry young man – not a million miles away from footballer Wayne Rooney – is one of three paintings Glossop artist Ghislaine Howard will be showing in an exhibition at a new gallery.
The Gateway Gallery has chosen artwork by her as a key part of its opening exhibition from this Thursday.
Ghislaine – who works from a studio on Oak Street, Glossop – said she was inspired to paint the Manchester United and England striker in acrylics from a photograph of him in a newspaper.
“A lot of my work is very much about people and the body and how the body expresses different emotions,” she said. “The painting is based on him. I just thought the photograph was a really powerful image of a very angry man in a display of absolute blind anger.”
Ghislaine will also be exhibiting other pictures at the Macclesfield gallery and her work will hang alongside works by L S Lowry and other celebrated artists John Bellany and Peter Howson.
Ghislaine has recently shown her work at the two Liverpool cathedrals as well as at Canterbury and Gloucester cathedrals as part of a tour of UK cathedral cities.
And for Liverpool’s celebrations as capital of culture she produced The Empty Tomb, which was unveiled by the Bishop of Liverpool on Easter Sunday 2008 and was also displayed at Manchester Cathedral in 2010.
She is also represented in many public and private collections, including the royal collection.
Gallery director Martin Regan believes it is only a matter of time before Ghislaine is classed as an internationally important artist. “We are delighted to have acquired the pictures and those who visit the opening show will see just what a fabulous artist Ghislaine is,” he said.
The opening exhibition of the Prestbury Road gallery – which specialises in modern British art – runs to the end of February.”
