Norma Howard

Norma Howard (born circa 1960) is a Choctaw Native American artist from Stigler, Oklahoma, who paints genre scenes of children playing, women working in fields, and other images inspired by family stories and Choctaw life. Howard won her first art award at the 1995 Red Earth Native American Cultural Festival in Oklahoma City. Her work is popular with collectors and critics.

Norma is a self-taught watercolorist who touches the heart with poignant stories of her Choctaw and Chickasaw ancestors in Oklahoma. She transports you to an earlier time by capturing moments of everyday life – a grandmother stitching a star quilt on a porch, or a boy fishing with a cane pole at a cypress-filled lake. Her style recalls the pointillism of the Impressionists, but instead of dots, she painstakingly layers tiny, basket-weave brush strokes to produce a vibrant depth of color rarely seen with watercolors. Howard, who started by painting miniatures, has moved to larger canvases that demand countless strokes to achieve her trademark richness of color and detail.

“These subjects about how people survived in hard times and in everyday life that every tribe can relate to, wherever they lived. People tell me it’s the details that draw them into my paintings and capture their feelings. My inspiration will always be to tell my ancestors’ story and honor the way they lived” says Howard.