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| MARY HARMAN |
About my work
Painting is for me the art of transforming a two-dimensional surface into an illusion of three
dimensions. In a sense my still-lifes are works of virtual sculpture - I paint objects with
consideration for their materiality, surface, and scale. Tension is created by manipulating the
distance between objects; mirrors and containers become metaphors and vessels for symbols.
Over the past thirty years I have worked in different media, including holography and three
dimensional constructions. The common theme continues to be illusion – what is real, what is
not real, and how reality can be manipulated.
Painting is all about space. My painted landscapes are the illusion of three dimensional space;
not actual “scenes” but manipulations to this end. The foreground is painted in fine detail, and
the eye is directed to the horizon line. The still lifes are executed in shallow space, a
requirement of the “trompe l’oeil” technique if the illusion is to be successful. Using devices
such as photos, windows, and mirrors, I can add illusions of distant space to the composition.
Thus a landscape, as a photo or framed painting, becomes an object, an element within the
composition.
I like a painting in which form is intertwined with content, one informing the other. My
paintings created in 2005-2006 speak of the times in which we live: a prevailing air of fear,
mistrust, and material acquisition. Objects lie close to the edges of the canvas, the periphery
of vision. Others loom in the background, threaten to break their containers; some objects are
only hinted at, lie covered, bound, ineffectual. A rubber band frequently appears; it suggests
tension as well as the infinity symbol transformed into common object. In these and in other
works of this period, I questioned the ability of art to affect political change; that the artist was
merely a player in the "entertainment industry." The still lifes, presented in the exhibition Shelf
Life (Holocenter, NY, 2007) represented these and more personal concerns, an "accounting of
my life as I grow old, in this time of war, destruction, and greed."
Work in progress continues. The most recent painting, Flotsam is perhaps the bridge to new
work, the rigidity of representational objects giving way to a sea of paint. Or perhaps it is just
about those enigmatic cracks in our reality, those layers that interface with other possibilities,
other worlds. As always, my work will be about who I am and what I see around me.
Mary Harman
August 2007
Painting is for me the art of transforming a two-dimensional surface into an illusion of three
dimensions. In a sense my still-lifes are works of virtual sculpture - I paint objects with
consideration for their materiality, surface, and scale. Tension is created by manipulating the
distance between objects; mirrors and containers become metaphors and vessels for symbols.
Over the past thirty years I have worked in different media, including holography and three
dimensional constructions. The common theme continues to be illusion – what is real, what is
not real, and how reality can be manipulated.
Painting is all about space. My painted landscapes are the illusion of three dimensional space;
not actual “scenes” but manipulations to this end. The foreground is painted in fine detail, and
the eye is directed to the horizon line. The still lifes are executed in shallow space, a
requirement of the “trompe l’oeil” technique if the illusion is to be successful. Using devices
such as photos, windows, and mirrors, I can add illusions of distant space to the composition.
Thus a landscape, as a photo or framed painting, becomes an object, an element within the
composition.
I like a painting in which form is intertwined with content, one informing the other. My
paintings created in 2005-2006 speak of the times in which we live: a prevailing air of fear,
mistrust, and material acquisition. Objects lie close to the edges of the canvas, the periphery
of vision. Others loom in the background, threaten to break their containers; some objects are
only hinted at, lie covered, bound, ineffectual. A rubber band frequently appears; it suggests
tension as well as the infinity symbol transformed into common object. In these and in other
works of this period, I questioned the ability of art to affect political change; that the artist was
merely a player in the "entertainment industry." The still lifes, presented in the exhibition Shelf
Life (Holocenter, NY, 2007) represented these and more personal concerns, an "accounting of
my life as I grow old, in this time of war, destruction, and greed."
Work in progress continues. The most recent painting, Flotsam is perhaps the bridge to new
work, the rigidity of representational objects giving way to a sea of paint. Or perhaps it is just
about those enigmatic cracks in our reality, those layers that interface with other possibilities,
other worlds. As always, my work will be about who I am and what I see around me.
Mary Harman
August 2007
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