If you think studio still-life painting is "old hat", watch out for the rabbit: seeing William Harsh's strange, theatrical "still-life" pictures might trip you up. Harsh can disorient perceptions and disturb habits of seeing, making visible the "otherness" of common objects and a tangible "thingness" in the appearances of unnamable forms that announce their existences in uncertain surroundings.

"From imagination and memory, I draw in thick oil paint, constructing forms to expose the emotive power of physical, tactile imagery. Through many re-configurations of what first emerges on canvas, intensities of color and movement arise. Jerry-rigged assemblies, sometimes fortress-like in appearance, get built up and 'set' in ambiguous spaces. Mix-ups in 'representation' occur. If all goes well, space becomes alive in its compression, ordinary objects become mutable, and unnamable forms adopt the authority of 'thingness'. Estrangement compels the surprise necessary to finish a picture. For me, the whole ensemble becomes a curiosity, the way driftwood piled high on a beach or junk piled up in a studio corner can suggest a drama. A finished picture must feel at least as real as an unexpected or dismantled monument."

William Harsh is an artist living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area with over 25 years of dedicated studio practice. Primarily an oil painter, he also works extensively with water-based media and with monotype printmaking. Raised in Europe and the US, he studied with Philip Guston and James Weeks at Boston University, and for many years taught studio art at colleges in New England and California. His work is included in numerous collections in the US, Canada, and Europe.

Artist Highlights

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