Peaks & Valleys

The April 9 opening of Delmas Howe's "Guys and Canyons" at Leslie-Lohman. | MICHAEL SHIREY

The April 9 opening of Delmas Howe's “Guys and Canyons” at Leslie-Lohman. | MICHAEL SHIREY

BY MICHAEL SHIREY | Delmas Howe is an American realist painter known for his homoerotic body of work. His most recent show, “Guys and Canyons,” on exhibit through April 21 at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, was launched a few years back with a series on rock canyons located near his New Mexico home. Many viewers saw flesh qualities in the formations — leading Howe to commission a group of models to paint in ways that reflected how their flesh had rock-like qualities. He views the exhibit as a metaphor for how life is “constantly changing, moving, turbulent, leading to some unpredictable continuing process.”

Delmas Howe. | MICHAEL SHIREY

Delmas Howe. | MICHAEL SHIREY

Howe has a long history with Leslie-Lohman and its founder Charles Leslie, who is featured in one of the artist’s earliest paintings as part of an Adam and Eve triptych series.

This current exhibit, which consists of 18 model portraits along with seven rock formation landscapes, can be viewed at the museum’s Prince Street Project Space, 127-B Prince Street at Wooster Street (leslielohman.org).