Divine Yet Painfully Human: Margarita Howis on Power, Duality and Cultural Rebellion

In a world where art often hides behind perfection, Margarita Howis dares to expose its soul. Her paintings are a mirror of what lies beneath the surface of beauty, a fusion of rebellion and grace, and a reflection of the divine nature of human imperfection. She creates not to decorate, but to awaken.

There are moments when an artist appears who changes not only how we see art but how we feel it. Margarita Howis is one of those rare forces. Her work does not whisper. It commands. It moves through the viewer like a wave of emotion, filled with light and shadow, tenderness and defiance. Every canvas feels alive, as though it breathes with the same pulse as its creator.

She is a storyteller of duality, a painter of contradictions. Her art is the meeting point between the spiritual and the sensual, the sacred and the street, the seen and the felt. Through color and form, she captures what language cannot, he ache of transformation, the beauty of chaos, and the truth of emotion.

The Genesis of Becoming

Margarita Howis did not begin her story in a studio surrounded by paint. She began it with blueprints and geometry, in the precise world of architecture. Born in Russia and shaped by life across seven countries, she carried with her a sensitivity to structure and rhythm. Architecture trained her to see form as language, to build order from chaos. But inside her, another world was waiting to emerge — one that could not be measured or confined.

The pandemic became her turning point. As silence spread across the globe, she was left alone with her thoughts, her heart, and her longing to create. The boundaries of her old life dissolved, and she made the decision to step fully into art. It was not a transition but a transformation. She left the safety of her previous identity and entered a new chapter without a map, guided only by instinct. That moment of surrender became the foundation of her life as an artist.

The Calling of Emotion

For Margarita Howis, art exists as more than a profession; it is the very rhythm of her being. It is how she breathes, how she processes the world, and how she allows emotion to take visible form. Years spent in academic and corporate environments refined her discipline but restrained her soul. The moment she turned to painting, she found freedom, a language that required no permission and no translation. Through art, she began reclaiming the parts of herself that had been hidden beneath structure and expectation.

Every time she paints, Howis transforms feeling into form. Her colors are not chosen for balance but for truth, reds that speak of defiance, blues that whisper longing, golds that shimmer with resilience. Each canvas becomes a landscape of emotion, where the divine and the imperfect coexist. She paints not the appearance of people but the pulse of what they carry inside, revealing how vulnerability and strength can live within the same breath.

In her studio, the act of creation feels sacred. Each brushstroke carries a heartbeat, each line a confession. She paints until silence turns to music and color begins to speak. To Howis, emotion is not fragility but wisdom, the element that gives art its pulse and humanity its truth. Through her work, she reminds us that feeling deeply is not a flaw; it is the highest form of being alive.

Between Sacred and Street

The power of Margarita’s art lies in her ability to blend two seemingly opposite worlds. She calls her style a dialogue between the sacred and the street. The sacred is her search for connection, for something eternal that exists beyond form. The street is her rhythm, her cultural pulse, her rebellion against silence. Together they form an aesthetic that feels both timeless and contemporary, both holy and raw.

Her portraits are often of women and cultural figures who embody transformation. Layered with texture, glitch effects, and hidden symbols, they carry the same emotional gravity as music. The women in her paintings are goddesses, rebels, and mirrors of their generation. They are vulnerable yet invincible, serene yet burning with defiance.

Her influences reveal her diversity of spirit. She draws inspiration from Basquiat’s chaos, Frida Kahlo’s emotional bravery, Erykah Badu’s energy, and Rick Owens’s shadowed sensuality. Each influence becomes a vibration within her own creative symphony.

The Rise of a Cultural Voice

In 2025, Margarita Howis’s name began resonating across cities and continents. Her exhibition The Art of Becoming in Copenhagen, presented with Remee Jackman and the WAU Collective, marked a profound statement of identity and transformation. Soon after, Eden After Dark in Miami, hosted by Amarna Gallery and supported by Douglas Elliman and J.P. Morgan Private Bank, explored the tension between paradise and desire. There, her work hung beside renowned artists Retna and Roman Feral, affirming her position among the most dynamic voices of her generation. The Miami chapter also featured her live portrait for Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz and a special appearance by former President Rosalía Arteaga Serrano of Ecuador—moments that bridged art, leadership, and cross-cultural dialogue.

In New York, her presence continued to expand. She exhibited at One Art Space and Triangle Loft and collaborated with the CPR Foundation, bringing her vision into new public and institutional contexts. Each stage became both a declaration and a dialogue, an invitation for art to exist where emotion meets intellect.

Through these projects, Howis emerged not only as a painter but as a cultural narrator. Her exhibitions are not simply displays of beauty; they are experiences that invite the viewer to step into the emotional architecture of her mind.

Art as Rebellion and Devotion

Margarita Howis’s art refuses to wait for permission. She paints live on the streets of SoHo, transforming the city into her studio. During Fashion Week, she captured the likeness of Lil Yachty in real time, surrounded by onlookers and the energy of New York itself. She has created commissioned works for Offset and Lil Meech, proving that fine art can live just as vividly outside of galleries as within them.

For her, art is both rebellion and devotion. It is rebellion against silence, against the idea that art must be confined to elite spaces. It is devotion to emotion, to storytelling, to the human spirit. Her work reminds us that beauty can exist in chaos, that rebellion can be holy, and that creation itself is an act of faith.

A Year of Expansion and Purpose

This year has been monumental for Howis. Beyond her gallery shows, she completed a large-scale mural in Brooklyn as part of the UnderhillWalls public art project, a vivid statement of color and energy that will live for months within the city’s streetscape. The mural stands as a testament to her ability to merge personal expression with public space.

Her next chapter arrives this November with her upcoming solo exhibition in New York titled Currency of Identity, an immersive exploration of identity, sensuality, and transformation. The experience will unfold like a film, surrounding visitors in emotion and atmosphere. Simultaneously, she will collaborate with the Wildlife Foundation for their tenth-anniversary gala at The Plaza Hotel, creating works to be auctioned for wildlife conservation. Through this union of art and purpose, Howis brings her message full circle: creation should heal as much as it provokes.

The Language of Power and Fragility

Collectors and curators often describe Margarita’s art as emotionally intelligent, a rare balance of sensitivity and strength. Her palette reveals her philosophy. Soft pastels dissolve into flashes of gold and crimson, echoing the contradictions that define humanity itself. Her subjects exude confidence, yet within their eyes lies something unguarded, a glimmer of tenderness that breaks the illusion of perfection. Her paintings have found homes in the collections of musicians, tastemakers, and global collectors, including Jason Derulo, Offset, and AQUA. Yet for Howis, success is not measured by ownership but by connection. She believes that when someone feels seen within her art, the work has fulfilled its purpose. Her mission is not to impress but to awaken.

The Woman Behind the Canvas

Behind the luminous surfaces of her paintings stands a woman of rare stillness and strength. Margarita Howis is both grounded and ethereal, a thinker whose intellect meets the quiet pulse of intuition. Her background in architecture gives her an almost mathematical precision, every line deliberate, every proportion measured, yet it is her soul that provides the wildness, the instinct that breathes emotion into structure. Together, these two sides form a perfect harmony, allowing her to balance chaos and order with poetic grace. When she paints, it feels as though her discipline and her dreaming coexist in a silent conversation, one that turns restraint into revelation.

The Eternal Becoming

At the heart of Margarita Howis’s philosophy lies a single word that defines her essence: becoming. Not arrival, not completion, but an endless process of transformation. Every painting she creates is a reflection of that journey, a self-portrait of evolution that captures the tension between what is and what is still emerging. For her, creation is a dialogue with the unknown, a way of asking the universe the same question again and again: what does it mean to be human, to feel, to change?

Howis does not view art as a product to be finished or possessed. It is a living journey, a continuum of emotion and discovery. Each piece she creates carries traces of her own growth. moments of stillness, flashes of clarity, the gentle ache of becoming something new.

Through painting, she translates emotion into color, giving form to feelings that cannot be contained in words. Her work whispers of light breaking through fear, of beauty born from uncertainty, of the quiet resilience that lives within all who dare to create.

For Margarita, divinity is not found in perfection but in presence. It lives in the pauses, the imperfections, the spaces between fear and hope. It exists in the softness that survives the storm, in the courage to begin again, and in the endless act of becoming. Through her art, she reminds the world that the divine is not something distant or untouchable; it is the human spirit itself, radiant in its constant evolution.

Epilogue: The Prayer of Color

Standing before a painting by Margarita Howis feels like standing inside a living emotion. The room shifts, the air thickens, and silence becomes eloquent. Her work is more than an image; it is a pulse.

She reminds us that art is not meant to flatter but to reveal. It should ask questions, open wounds, and heal them in the same breath. In her hands, rebellion becomes tenderness, beauty becomes truth, and truth becomes light.

Margarita Howis continues to rise not as a trend but as a timeless voice — one that speaks to the soul and asks us to see the divine not above us, but within us. Her art is both a mirror and a prayer, proof that even in our most fragile moments, we remain endlessly becoming.

Photography by

J.Robertson