"Maria" Painting

Many of these works incorporate flags. The flags represent the human-built world: cities, roads, farms, data centers, etc., the world we have built alongside the natural world. The flag designs obstruct the view of other elements in the paintings, nearly erasing our ability to see the natural world which is 'behind' the flag designs. My paintings attempt to represent our built world and the natural world on the same surface at the same time. Peter P. Marra, ornithologist and Dean at Georgetown University has said that "the American dream has turned into the American nightmare as we start to look at what we're doing to biodiversity and systems that we depend on as humans." In many works, I try to paint about this. If a painting is remarkable, it impresses you in surprising and memorable ways that expand whenever you look at it. I also paint people, birds - whatever I choose. As the artist, I am just trying to convey some thoughts about them in this statement. Your interpretations are equally valid. Images in some of the paintings are partially obscured by bands of color, producing a louvered visual field. This is similar to the bands of mist painted by Wang Hui in scrolls over 300 years ago. Likewise, these bands of color resemble the national flag of Greece, flipped and flopped. The paintings reference commonplace images: video games, carnival, television, headaches, nature, disasters, music, charms, signs and symbols. Many recent works are diptychs. One set of four paintings seemingly depict four time zones in the continental United States. A fifth diptych of clocks is painted in fluorescent color and based on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists doomsday clock - created by J. Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein & Eugene Rabinowitch in 1947. A second set of five works in oil, enamel and fluorescent enamel depict the Cyclone rollercoaster on Coney Island in New York city. These cyclones are named after five major hurricanes: Katrina, Harvey, Irma, Sandy, and Maria. Prior to 1998, the work was brightly colored and highly impasted, often using a cinematic arrangement by placing multiple canvases in sequential order - like a zoetrope. After 1998, I shifted the paintings’ material substance from thick to thin. The thin works explored preternatural elements in our daily lives and focused on incidents of spiritual and intellectual compression. Originally from Sioux Falls, South Dakota Harris has lived and worked in Santa Fe since 1981.