Stopping in New York on the way home, he found the perfect setting for his project in the abandoned piers of the West Village of New York--the theater of the "sexual party" that had liberated him during the 1960s and 1970s, but which had also provided an environment in which AIDS would spread. Throughout the series, the ruined architecture seems to dominate the human figures. It, thus, helps to evoke a sense of inevitable doom. Also contributing to the sorrowful character of the pictures are the overall dark tonalities and, especially, the somber expressions and gestures of the figures.

Yet, despite the dark mood, the intense sensuality of the handsome, muscular figures recalls the cowboys in Rodeo Pantheon. Naked, except for boots and leather fetish accessories (harnesses, hoods, caps, and jock straps), the men in Stations superficially resemble characters by Tom of Finland, but their solemn movements differentiate them from Tom's exuberant figures. Thus, Howe's scenes reveal the combination of sexual passion and death, which lies at the heart of the tragedy of AIDS.

Howe closely based many of his compositions upon famous Renaissance altarpieces. For example, in the Flagellation, the poses of the principal figures and their placement within the monumental architectural space recall depictions of the Flagellation of Christ by Sebastiano del Piombo and Caravaggio, among other earlier artists. Howe's selection of the Flagellation as one of his subjects indicates that he does not feel obligated to repeat the traditional Catholic Stations. Because it occurred before his condemnation to death, the Flagellation of Christ does not form part of the Catholic Stations of the Cross. However, the subject is obviously relevant both to the theme of Christ's suffering and to the S/M context of the paintings that Howe has thus far produced for the series.

All of the components of Howe's Stations show sensitivity to the significance of Christ's Passion, as well as awareness of the distinctive qualities of recent American gay life. Instead of the traditional opening subject of Christ condemned to death, Howe has depicted in The Beginning six isolated figures, scattered throughout the huge space of the piers. In Veronica's Kiss, a drag queen kisses the sacrificial victim, who is being led through the piers. Utilizing a composition recalling the monumental and deeply moving Pietà (1604, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Naples) by Annibale Carracci, one of his favorite artists, Howe shows in the Gentle Executioner a burly, hooded figure tenderly embracing the bruised corpse on his lap.

As in his earlier work, Howe has created in Stations: A Gay Passion images that are both universal and contemporary. Never concerned with passing fashions, he devises monumental compositions in the spirit of the Renaissance and Baroque artists that he admires so much. Through his innovative handling of subject matter, he reveals the pervasiveness of homoerotic desire in Western culture, while eloquently representing unique features of gay life in the United States. Showing great integrity in both his art and his life, Howe seeks to define gay history through works that connect past and future.

After Stonewall, American gay male art underwent a radical transformation as artists came out and began to treat gay themes openly and directly.

Contemporary Art, which designates new currents in art since 1970, is identified with postmodernism; during this period an art addressing gay and lesbian identity emerged.

The various cultural patterns, especially the conditions of artistic production and the types of subjects and themes represented, provide a great deal of evidence about Renaissance sexuality and art.

The International Gay Rodeo Association, a thriving group with more than thirty affiliates across the United States and in two Canadian provinces, celebrates both the cultural heritage of the rural West and the glbtq identities of its participants.

Sebastian's broad and long-standing presence in queer artistic production suggests that he functions as an emblem of the feelings of shame, rejection, inverted desire, and loneliness endured by queer people in a homophobic society.

A distinctive American narrative genre that has developed over more than two centuries, the Western is now consumed worldwide; characteristically depicting homosocial relationships, it is also frequently suffused with homoeroticism.

American painter Paul Cadmus is best known for the satiric innocence of his frequently censored paintings of burly men in skin-tight clothes, but he also created works that celebrate same-sex domesticity.

The most original painter of early seventeenth-century Europe, Caravaggio imbues his art with homoeroticism.

Dissatisfied with merely describing the material world, American painter Jared French devised a pictorial language to explore human unconsciousness and its relation to sexuality.

Although academic scholars continue to insist on El Greco's heterosexuality, evidence exists that the great Renaissance artist had a male life partner; and many artists and writers have noted the homoeroticism of his work, especially the intense sensual energy of his male nudes.

Defiantly rejecting the invisibility, homophobia, and indignities of pre-Stonewall life, the men in Tom of Finland's drawings reflect a hyper-masculine, working-class version of homosexual manhood that proved important to the emerging gay rights movement.