Rob Howe is an artist based in the Illawarra/Dharawal region on the New South Wales south coast. His work honours the qualities of a scene, exploring what may be unnoticed. His works are evocative rather than realistic, energised by a complex play of light and colour, the tilt of a tree or telegraph pole, the smudge of a horizontal shadow.

People inhabit these spaces, tenderly portrayed in brush, the edges of their form enveloped by the light-filled settings. His portraits communicate an impression where the space between the viewer and the subject is set at a neighbourly distance. The essence is captured, the superfluous edited out –what painter Fairfield Porter might describe as "a respect for things as they are".

Howe approaches realism with an abstract brush. His exterior portraits are awash in Australian sunlight, almost squinting to bring you into focus. We have our space, and they have theirs.

- Tony Mighell, 2024

Rob Howe completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts in 2000, followed by a Master of Creative Arts in 2013. Howe received a Highly Commended in the Waverly Art Prize (2017), and was a Finalist in the Mosman Art Prize (2007, 2008). He has also been awarded residencies in Greece by the Australian Archaeological Institute in Athens; aboard the MV LYUBOV ORLOVA, Antarctic Peninsula; as well as aboard the KAPITAN KHLEBNIKOV, Ross Sea, Antarctica.  He has most recently been commissioned to present a series of works by the Wollongong Art Gallery (2026) titled 'Transience Atlas' - artworks mapping impermanence through a year-long study of seasonal change across New South Wales.