Howard Read

Biography

I am an artist and illustrator and gained my first degree in Fine Art, Painting from Chelsea School of Art, and my MA in Illustration from the Royal College of Art. At present I am a PhD candidate at Manchester Metropolitan University, researching the role of drawing in the process of urban regeneration.

Research Interest

My current research practice and theoretical reading is focused on the role of the sketchbook in creative artistic activity. I’m interested in the inherent qualities and theory of recording and writing in sketchbooks, notebooks and journals as a way of gaining knowledge and the intuitive process of critical understanding. What the anthropologist Michael Taussig has called ‘a type of modernist literature that crosses over into the science of social investigation’ and allows for ‘the imaginative logic of discovery’ (Taussig 2011).