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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 37, Number 5. 3rd April 1974

Art — Paintings by Jeffrey Harris:

page 16

Art

Paintings by Jeffrey Harris:

'Three cousins' painting by Jeffrey Harris

Jeffrey Harris is a young painter at present living out on Banks Peninsula near Christchurch. I first came across his drawing some years ago when he was working in Dunedin. A few works in various isolated places—group shows and the like—were all I'd seen. But each time I was impressed by the intensity of his work. Often I was reminded of Munch, seeing the faces staring out, the isolated, at times weirdly distorted figures, the tilting landscapes. There seemed to be some kind of religious obsession—its not too strong a word—running through it all, the crucified man, though I got no further than that. I wasn't quite prepared for what I found in this show. There is a greater variety both of subject and of presentation and overall; a gentler tone. Not that the intensity is gone; its as it the energy behind that obsessive quality is held somewhat in abeyance while the painter explores different ways of talking; or perhaps that as his control of medium and style grows; he can say more and different things in more satisfying ways.

There are only six paintings in the exhibition apparently selected by Peter McLeavey out of 25 or so. How representative the selection is I don't know. Those chosen are arranged chronologically around the room to give a summary of development over the period of a year; one man's view of the development. All the talk about experimentation, progress and so on shouldn't obscure the fact that all these paintings stand up, as paintings, in their own right. Even a quick glance at the first will show you that. Its a fairly large painting, immediately striking in its brilliant colour. Three figures, a woman, a younger girl and a boy on a swing, stare out of the painting together yet isolated; behind is a field of grass, behind that a cardboard landscape blocked out in pastel colours. So much could be said of this—the red and blue of the clothes against the vivid emerald-green grass, they way the grass is painted in thick regular strokes contrasting with the flatter colours in the background, the faces themselves, particularly the pain of the younger woman.... The second painting also is figures in a landscape, two faces between which we see a Gaugin-like Christ on cross. Again the faces look out with a disconcerting, slightly appealing air. The colours are softer, more diffuse; the left face, perhaps garlanded, I found very beautiful.

Van Gogh's "Crows across a Wheatfield", the one he died painting, provides the inspiration for the two landscapes. The first, which I prefer, is perhaps only six inches high, eighteen inches long, richly painted, the paint squeezed from the tube rather than applied with a brush. To me it has more freedom, its power escapes outwards more than that of the other does. "Homage to Van Gogh" also has the incredibly bright squeezed yellows and blues and reds. Above all it is a painting about paint. Van Gogh's roads going nowhere desperately fast here become more rounded, more symmetrical; they wind back on themselves in figures of eight and it seems you newer get off, spiralling round and round among those glittering colours. The paint is itself a landscape, at least an inch thick in parts, behind which the canvas can be seen.

I bracket the last two paintings together also, the final terms in a scries tending from the figurative to the non-figurative. The smaller one, 'a piece of myself, is quite simply delightful—a little cartoon-strip, with umbrellas and moons and people and landscapes and much more, wound into frames with lines of colour. There's a lovely humour here, Jeffrey Harris taking a whimsical, an ironical look at himself and his work.

Jeffrey Harris painting of two people

Jeffrey Harris painting made up of grids

Finally, another large work, The other day I saw...... which remains something of a mystery to me. It seems as if the frames seen in the last painting are breaking and dissolving under some stress, that the inside world and the outside world are merging into a chaos of forms and colours—but I may be intellectualising. It's just that when I saw it the second time, there was a suggestion of a frame, like a window or the frame of a newspaper photograph, with the ribbons of colour twining through it and around it. But it can keep its mystery, as they all do. That is a characteristic of good paintings; its what leads you back to them.

I don't see the varying styles as necessarily mutually exclusive. Certain basic concerns are evident in all six paintings—it would be tedious to spell these out; the concern with paint, with the materials and the medium is an obvious example. And I haven't been talking much about 'meaning' or 'response' simply because, if the works are accessible, that side of things is up to the person who goes and looks. Jeffrey Harris has the energy, the ability, the dedication (which means he works hard and consistently) to paint more and better. His paintings are exciting things to come across. And they don't fade when you leave.

Landscape Jeffrey Harris painting