Member Spotlight - Geoffrey Houghton

Geoffrey Houghton has been drawing peculiar characters since childhood, mostly to amuse his family. A self-taught artist now based in Rockwall, Texas, he began with watercolors in the 1990s but soon lost patience with traditional subject matter. His way in turned out to be a series of Siamese cats painted in the manner of Amedeo Modigliani - an unusually good fit, since a Siamese already has the long neck, the narrow head, and the pale unreadable eyes that Modigliani spent a career inventing. The cats eventually gave way to people. The proportions stayed.

He calls the result SteamFolk, and the place they live is Wistful World: a half-remembered nineteenth century with its own fashion, machinery, and logic. His characters are real historical figures pulled sideways into it, documented lives bent into half-truths. The bicycles get as much attention as the riders - filigree, lettering, wheels built spoke by spoke - because the machine is what carries the character away. And nobody smiles. The world these travelers cross refuses to match their mood, and that gap is where the painting happens.

Since relocating to North Texas, Houghton's work has found a quick audience. Evermore won Best in Show at the Forney Arts Council's juried exhibition for the 2026 National Accordion Association Music Conference. Whispers of Andalusia was selected for the Visual Arts Guild of Frisco's Crème de la Crème exhibition, and appeared alongside She rode where sense would not follow in the Stars of Texas juried show in Brownwood. His earlier New England years built the foundation: solo exhibitions in Connecticut and Massachusetts, first place at the Monson Arts Council Spring Show for Lizzie's Return to Centre County, the Shepard Family Award for The New Woman, and cover placements ranging from a literary magazine to a poetry anthology for the New Britain Museum of American Art.

Houghton works primarily with Golden Open Acrylics. More of the Wistful World can be found at WistfulWorld.art.

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