Conley Harris

CV

Conley Harris is fearless and forthright—and lyric—in his approach to the landscape. Through the paintings in this luminous show, Harris invites us to join him on a walk on a path activated by his passionate brush. He is an intimate of this place—the perfect guide.

Harris sees the forest and the trees—and roots, grasses, rivers, and ponds, and other elements of the verdant New England woodlands. “It’s the forest silence,” he writes, “the damp bark, stillness of the air, the layers of old leaves between the trees.” You can sense those facets of nature in his immersive bravura paintings.

Expressive, marked by semi-abstract passages, these paintings are alive with rich, often earthy pigments. Layers of paint and imagery enhance the sensation of depth of observation—as if Harris could see through the foliage to the essence of the land.

That layering effect derives in part from Harris’s remarkable process. An enlarged photograph of a 16-by-20-inch plein-air oil sketch printed on a canvas serves as matrix for each painting. “This transformation,” the artist notes, “is about seeing the landscape as new experience, looking at its parts and pieces, reconsidering my memories of sitting and painting the original smaller picture.”

This act of reinvention connects Harris to the history of landscape painting, from the likes of Lorraine, Caspar David Friedrich, and Ruisdael to such Maine masters of the last century as Rockwell Kent, Marsden Hartley, and John Marin. As a mentor to generations of painters through his teaching, he is the model artist, acknowledging the past while embracing the present.

“I have never hesitated to talk to trees,” Harris states, to consider them his “partners”—like arboreal companions. Traversing a high ridge overlooking the Charles River outside Boston, he encountered a special tree-bound world. Lucky for us, he felt compelled to paint his impressions and bear them back to us. His is a walk to remember.

-Carl Little, Author and Critic