Kenny Harris (born 1974) studied at a liberal arts school, Colorado College, where he received a well-rounded art education. After that, he went to study art history and sight-size drawing under Charles Cecil in Italy. Upon his return, his work, focusing on cityscapes and interiors, was well received in California.
When it comes to oil painting, Harris taught himself the basics but later learned the intricacies of controlling value and temperature from veteran realist Frank Mason, to whom he fondly refers as “a great teacher.”
“I’m not about statement,” he said. “My work is about an interpretation of the world I see around me.”
He is also not intentionally trying to achieve an effect in the viewer: “If I see a light event, a space, a condition of light that I respond to, that makes me want to paint it, I’m assuming that someone else will want to look at it.”
Painting cityscapes naturally involves plenty of traveling. “I’ve often gone to places that I find intellectually interesting,” Harris said, “like China, or Buenos Aires after the economic crisis, Cuba, wherever. … Even though the subject matter may be mundane, for me the context is inspired, so hopefully that will also come across.” His work certainly does transport one to a different place.
“I travel to Europe a lot, to look at the oil paintings,” said Harris. “That is the best teacher for me, nowadays. When you look at these paintings, you engage in a direct dialogue with the greatest painters that ever lived. And I learned the most from them,” adding that not all painting knowledge transmitted nowadays is historically accurate.
The painting here is a cityscape from Lijiang, a small town in China’s southwestern province of Yunnan, famous for its natural beauty and its Naxi ethnic minority—descendants of Tibetan nomads.
“All over town you had these Chinese wall paintings in ink—some were landscapes, some had more text, some simply depicted what was in the shops inside,” Harris said.
Here, Harris gives us a treat of two worlds: “I loved the idea of dividing the painting in half, depicting a western cityscape on the left and a Chinese landscape on the right. There was originally a different wall painting there, but I needed a landscape so I took another one from another wall.”
To good effect, we may add.
Kenny Harris is represented by Koplin Del Rio Gallery (California) and George Billis Gallery in New York City where his show is open until Oct. 25.
Wim Van Aalst is a painter based in Belgium.