Nancy Howe is a self-taught artist who began developing her art in 1988 from her rural studio in Vermont. Her paintings in oils, which span the range of subjects from animals and birds, to landscape, still life, and figures, exhibit a refined quality of realism often described as suffused with light, exquisitely textural, and having a quiet presence.

Her paintings have become part of several museum permanent collections, including the National Museum of Wildlife Art and the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum. She has been the recipient of numerous national exhibition awards, including Oil Painters of America’s grand prize, the American National Award of Excellence in 2003, and several regional OPA awards since 2009. In 1990, Howe made history as the first woman artist chosen in the history of the U.S. Department of Interior’s Federal Duck Stamp Program established in 1934, painting the winning design for the 1991-2 revenue stamp.

Howe has had work juried into the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum’s international bird and wildlife exhibitions since 1990, and in 2005 she was honored as Birds in Art Master Wildlife Artist. For many years she was an exhibiting artist in the International Masters of Fine Art Invitational in San Antonio, Texas, the Artists of America show at the Colorado History Museum in Denver, CO and the Great America Artists Exhibition in Cincinnati Ohio.

Howe has been a Signature Member of the Society of Animal Artists since 1992 and a Master Signature Member of Oil Painters of America since 2013. She has been a contributing artist in several art publications, including the 2001 Wildlife Art: Sixty Contemporary Masters and Their Work.

In 2007, she created a fundraising cultural painting project, Painting a Brighter Future for Women, that currently supports programs empowering women in native communities in Kenya, Bhutan, and Panama.