In the most precise and archaic sense of the word, Rachel Howard’s suicide paintings are pathetic. That is to say, they picture a certain kind of pathos: a relationship between subject and viewer that is undeniably affective without being reduced to voyeurism on the one hand, or pure sympathy on the other. The series began with the suicide of an acquaintance that was not discovered in the drama imagined, but in a position from which he might have saved himself at any moment; a kneeling pose similar to that of prayer. In other words, Howard’s paintings refuse the scene of violent self-killing and show us that the act of suicide is intimate but by no means private.