Mike Howat is a New Hampshire-based painter and educator whose work explores themes of urbanization, Americana, and collective memory.
Since earning his B.F.A. from the New Hampshire Institute of Art in 2014, he has been actively engaged in the growing New England art scene, exhibiting regionally and nationally. He has shown regularly with Kelley Stelling Contemporary and Mill Brook Gallery & Sculpture Garden, and has also exhibited with Chase’s Garage, Rochester Museum of Fine Arts, Nahcotta, Talon Gallery (PDX), Carrie Secrist Gallery (Chicago), and Nucleus Portland, among others.
Howat was the long-term artist-in-residence at Kimball Jenkins School of Art from 2016-2020, where he taught classes and workshops in painting, printmaking, and drawing. Since 2020, he has been teaching at AVA Gallery & Art Center, where he also coordinates an outreach program called ArtReach, which provides weekly free artist demonstrations and studio visits with artists across the region.
In 2018, Howat began dabbling in curating with Figuratively Speaking, an exhibition of established and emerging abstract artists in the Northeast. He recently became a curatorial advisor for the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts. In 2021, he co-curated SALON 2021, an exhibition that included over 140 artists and hundreds of works exploring the diversity of makers in the region. He has plans for future satellite projects and exhibition spaces.
When not in his studio, Howat is likely wandering the coast or the White Mountains.