Charley Harper was a Cincinnati

Cincinnati, Ohio

Cincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...

-based American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

  Modernist

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 artist. He was best known for his highly stylized wildlife prints, posters and book illustrations.

Born in Frenchton, West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

 in 1922, Harper's upbringing on his family farm influenced his work to his last days. He left his farm home to study art at the Art Academy of Cincinnati

Art Academy of Cincinnati

The Art Academy of Cincinnati is a private college of art and design, accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, in Cincinnati, Ohio...

, and won the academy’s first Stephen H. Wilder Traveling Scholarship. While at the Academy, and supposedly on the first day, Charley met fellow artist Edie Mckee, whom he would marry shortly after graduation in 1947.

Charley and Edie spent their honeymoon traveling the country, mainly in the west and south, being able to do so because of the Stephen H. Wilder Scholarship the Academy awarded to Charley for post-graduate travels. Charley Harper returned to the Art Academy of Cincinnati as a teacher and also worked for a commercial firm before working on his own. He and his wife worked out of their Roselawn and Finneytown homes, and later, with their only child Brett Harper, formed Harper Studios.

During his career, Charley Harper illustrated numerous books, notably The Golden Book of Biology, magazines such as Ford Times, as well as many prints, posters, and other works. As his subjects are mainly natural, with birds prominently featured, Charley often created works for many nature-based organizations, among them the National Park Service

National Park Service

The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...

; Cincinnati Zoo; Cincinnati Nature Center; Hamilton County (Ohio) Park District; and Hawk Mountain

Hawk Mountain

Hawk Mountain is a mountain ridge, part of the Blue Mountain Ridge in the Appalachian Mountain chain, located in central-eastern Pennsylvania near Reading and Allentown. The area includes 13,000 acres of protected private and public land, including the 2,600 acre Hawk Mountain Sanctuary.The River...

 Sanctuary in Pennsylvania. He also designed interpretive displays for Everglades National Park

Everglades National Park

Everglades National Park is a national park in the U.S. state of Florida that protects the southern 25 percent of the original Everglades. It is the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States, and is visited on average by one million people each year. It is the third-largest...

.

The first exhibition of his works in Germany took place in 2011 at Kunstverein in Hamburg in Hamburg.

Charley Harper died on Sunday, June 10, 2007 after contending with pneumonia

Pneumonia

Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...

 for some months.

Style

In a style he called "minimal realism", Charley Hlnknarper captured the essence of his subjects with the fewest possible visual elements. When asked to describe his unique visual style, Charley responded:

When I look at a wildlife or nature subject, I don’t see the feathers in the wings, I just count the wings. I see exciting shapes, color combinations, patterns, textures, fascinating behavior and endless possibilities for making interesting pictures. I regard the picture as an ecosystem

Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....

 in which all the elements are interrelated, interdependent, perfectly balanced, without trimming or unutilized parts; and herein lies the lure of painting; in a world of chaos, the picture is one small rectangle in which the artist can create an ordered universe.

He contrasted his nature-oriented artwork with the realism of John James Audubon

John James Audubon

John James Audubon was a French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in their natural habitats...

, drawing influence from Cubism

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

, Minimalism

Minimalism

Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...

, Einsteinian physics

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...

 and countless other developments in Modern art and science. His style distilled and simplified complex organisms and natural subjects, yet they are often arranged in a complex fashion. On the subject of his simplified forms, Harper noted:

I don't think there was much resistance to the way I simplified things. I think everybody understood that. Some people liked it and others didn't care for it. There's some who want to count all the feathers in the wings and then others who never think about counting the feathers, like me.

The results are bold, colorful, and often whimsical. The designer Todd Oldham

Todd Oldham

Todd Oldham is an American-born designer and president of L-7 Designs Inc. His fun, lighthearted approach to fashion and style has become known to millions through his fashion lines, interior designs, books and by appearing in television shows...

 wrote of Harper, "Charley’s inspired yet accurate color sense is undeniable, and when combined with the precision he exacts on rendering only the most important details, one is always left with a sense of awe."
Charley, on numerous examples, also went outside the medium of graphic art and included short prose poems for the artwork he made.

Examples of Harper's style may be seen in the example above, as well as the following United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 National Park Service

National Park Service

The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...

posters:

Honors

In honor of Charley Harper's work, December 8, 2006 was declared "Charley Harper Day" by the mayor of Cincinnati:

In 2003, the Sharonville Fine Arts Council awarded Harper a Lifetime Achievement Award.

External links

• Cornell Lab of Ornithology - Interview about one of Harper's most important works and his process (2006).
• 2007 Exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum
• Excerpts from The Golden Book of Biology (1962)
• Charley Harper Official Online Studio