BRENT HARRIS

Brent Harris’s paintings develop pictorially in their making. The space in his pictures embraces no logical sense of perspective, and the scale of forms or figurative elements and their relationships in the painting are also generally free of rationality. Visual logic starts to emerge as the work precedes - a logic that belongs to the individual painting.

His imagery often develops from suggested forms that surface while the painting is being worked on. Figures also emerge in his printmaking and drawings that will migrate over to the canvas. He describes his paintings as figurative, but they are barely realist as they attempt to question and play with the symbolic meaning of forms. This may in turn lead to some sort of allegory, where meaning remains fluid. Symbols are loaded with interpretive potential and narratives want to take hold. As a result, meaning is often contingent on what the viewer brings to the painting.

Absurdity is often a welcome driver of his compositions and reflection on the absurdity of life seems to be a constant.