'Tea Party' by Greg Harris, 1981, New York Art Students League, Fechin Institute, Santa Fe, Large Oil

Description

Signed lower left, 'Greg Harris' for Gregory Frank Harris (American, born 1953) and dated 1981. Additionally signed, verso, and titled, … more Signed lower left, 'Greg Harris' for Gregory Frank Harris (American, born 1953) and dated 1981. Additionally signed, verso, and titled, 'Stea Life in a Pond'.
Framed dimensions: 34.5 H x 29.5 W x 2.5 D inches.

The study of art and the history of art are closely intertwined in the work of Gregory Frank Harris which reflects his exploration of technique and art history. Born in southern California, Harris and his twin brother grew up in a family that embraced the visual arts as well as theatre and music. During his stint at California State University in Long Beach, he studied both art and theatre, but also began writing music, which then became his primary focus. Over the next decade, Harris and his brother played piano and drums respectively in a variety of bands, earning their living in the nightclubs and hotels up and down the west coast. The first sign of a new direction appeared while the band was on the road in Spokane, Washington where Harris rekindled his interest in painting.

Like generations of artists before him, Harris turned to the old masters and the impressionist painters as sources for his study of painting. Harris was fortunate to have two of his copies, Rembrandt’s Woman with Pink and Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, selected as props for the 1982 film version of the musical Annie, directed by John Huston. Harris also began exhibiting at juried shows in 1982 and marketing his work nationally. Juried exhibitions--and awards--followed, including an unprecedented first, second and third place award in the popular vote at the historic Lyme Art Association in 2001.

By the mid–1980s, Harris decided to leave California to study at the Art Students League in New York City, and he subsequently settled in Duxbury, Massachusetts in the 1990s. There, he continued his plein air painting, working with Wendy Martin who served not only as his model but also created the nineteenth century costumes seen in the images. A workshop at the Fechin Institute in Taos, New Mexico, however, lured him back to the southwest in 1996, and he spent the next four years living in Santa Fe. By 2000, however, he returned to New England, this time to Lyme, Connecticut where he taught private students as well as classes at the Lyme Art Association. During these years, Harris was also affiliated with the Putney Painters, a loosely organized group of representational artists centered around Richard Schmid and Nancy Guzik based near Putney, Vermont. Typically, a group of painters would arrive at the large studio barn every other weekend to spend their time working in the company of other artists and receiving casual mentorship from Schmid and Guzik.

In 2003, Harris returned again to Santa Fe where he is surrounded by a landscape that offers abundant sites for exploring new dimensions in painting, and a city that is home to a thriving and diverse arts community. At the core of much of Harris’s work is a sustained dialogue between plein air painting and creating works in the studio. Harris offers a contemporary perspective on this duality, noting that plein air painting pushes him to develop his figural images more thoroughly in the studio. In his naturalist images, where he works with both models and photographs, he comments that it has become “very challenging to see how much better” his figural paintings have become as he has explored the landscape subjects around Santa Fe. In short, Harris’s curiosity about historical techniques combined with his study of the texture of paint and the elusive challenge of capturing light on canvas have all informed his growth as an artist.

With thanks to Janet Whitmore, Ph.D.

Awards:
2001 First, second and third place, popular vote, Lyme Art Association, Lyme, Connecticut
1994 First and second place, watercolor and oil painting, Plymouth, Massachusetts
1992 First place, oil painting, Duxbury Art Museum, Duxbury, Massachusetts
1985 First place, Juried show, Affair in the Gardens, Beverly Hills, California less