Philip Harris (artist)
Encyclopedia
Philip Harris won 1st prize in the National Portrait Gallery's 1993 BP Portrait Award for portrait painting
with the painting 'Two Figures Lying in a Shallow Stream' generally considered to have been the most powerful and influential painting in the history of the competition. Harris was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to paint Sir Anthony Dowell, Director of the Royal Ballet.
He specialises in photorealistic figurative painting and portraiture, rendered in oils
or pencil drawing. Despite the extraordinarily technical approach to his work he is a highly personal, idiosynchratic, expressive artist who's paintings may be disturbing and confrontational.
Art world accolades:
"Philip Harris is a highly contemporary artist extending traditions of realism in British painting."
John Slyce (1997) Time Out
"It is an impressive body of work, standing completely outside the orthodoxies of contemporary art practice…. Philip Harris is an example of an artist whose paintings have emerged form the crowd, it now looks resilient enough and authoritative enough to survive far away from the mainstream, chilly and rather fascinating."
Charles Suamarez Smith (1997) Modern Painters
"Harris is a genuine, unexpected, formidable talent, grounded in the most ardently traditional technique but with something to say which is totally au courant."
Marina Vaizey (1997) Galleries and Museums
"As a piece of brilliant sharp focus observation it gives the lie to any assertion that traditional skills have now been completely forgotten"
Edward Lucie-Smith (1995) Art Today
"Beneath the immaculate paint lies drawing, direct onto the canvas almost of Degas' strength and delivery."
Brian Sewell (1993) Art Review
"In one self portrait Harris paints his own profile, chin near the ground, his cheeks full as he blows hard onto the grass, every dot of shaved hair, every blade of grass is perfectly, photographically executed, we can even almost see the invisible, the air which billows from the lips. Immaculate."
Roseanne Negrotti (1991) City Limits
"The detail of Philip Harris's double portrait of himself and his partner competes with that of trompe l'oeil still life painting and suggests kinship with Photorealism and Gertsh. But Harris's painting is rigorously structured, with the two bodies placed very exactly in their permitted areas and on a carpet of natural and manmade material organised along strict geometrical lines, mostly at 45 degrees to the coordinates of the canvas. Thus a picture in which fact seems dominant to a perhaps discomforting degree takes on a hierarchical, other- worldly character.
Norbert Lynton (2000) Introduction to "Painting The Century" NPG
"Harris's microscopic technique and obsessive observation seem to take us way beyond the furthest limits of imagination" "The artist throws himself and his dreams into the rubbish beneath our feet, in this extraordinary work of self exposure and undeniable power".
Robin Gibson (2000) "Painting The Century" NPG
" His attention to detail doesn't constrain his deeper purpose, which is to locate dreamlike states of being within an ostensibly real world."
William Cook (1991) What's On
Portrait painting
Portrait painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject. Beside human beings, animals, pets and even inanimate objects can be chosen as the subject for a portrait...
with the painting 'Two Figures Lying in a Shallow Stream' generally considered to have been the most powerful and influential painting in the history of the competition. Harris was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to paint Sir Anthony Dowell, Director of the Royal Ballet.
He specialises in photorealistic figurative painting and portraiture, rendered in oils
Oil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...
or pencil drawing. Despite the extraordinarily technical approach to his work he is a highly personal, idiosynchratic, expressive artist who's paintings may be disturbing and confrontational.
Art world accolades:
"Philip Harris is a highly contemporary artist extending traditions of realism in British painting."
John Slyce (1997) Time Out
"It is an impressive body of work, standing completely outside the orthodoxies of contemporary art practice…. Philip Harris is an example of an artist whose paintings have emerged form the crowd, it now looks resilient enough and authoritative enough to survive far away from the mainstream, chilly and rather fascinating."
Charles Suamarez Smith (1997) Modern Painters
"Harris is a genuine, unexpected, formidable talent, grounded in the most ardently traditional technique but with something to say which is totally au courant."
Marina Vaizey (1997) Galleries and Museums
"As a piece of brilliant sharp focus observation it gives the lie to any assertion that traditional skills have now been completely forgotten"
Edward Lucie-Smith (1995) Art Today
"Beneath the immaculate paint lies drawing, direct onto the canvas almost of Degas' strength and delivery."
Brian Sewell (1993) Art Review
"In one self portrait Harris paints his own profile, chin near the ground, his cheeks full as he blows hard onto the grass, every dot of shaved hair, every blade of grass is perfectly, photographically executed, we can even almost see the invisible, the air which billows from the lips. Immaculate."
Roseanne Negrotti (1991) City Limits
"The detail of Philip Harris's double portrait of himself and his partner competes with that of trompe l'oeil still life painting and suggests kinship with Photorealism and Gertsh. But Harris's painting is rigorously structured, with the two bodies placed very exactly in their permitted areas and on a carpet of natural and manmade material organised along strict geometrical lines, mostly at 45 degrees to the coordinates of the canvas. Thus a picture in which fact seems dominant to a perhaps discomforting degree takes on a hierarchical, other- worldly character.
Norbert Lynton (2000) Introduction to "Painting The Century" NPG
"Harris's microscopic technique and obsessive observation seem to take us way beyond the furthest limits of imagination" "The artist throws himself and his dreams into the rubbish beneath our feet, in this extraordinary work of self exposure and undeniable power".
Robin Gibson (2000) "Painting The Century" NPG
" His attention to detail doesn't constrain his deeper purpose, which is to locate dreamlike states of being within an ostensibly real world."
William Cook (1991) What's On
External links
- National Portrait Gallery collection - Sir Anthony DowellAnthony DowellSir Anthony James Dowell, CBE is a retired English ballet dancer and former Artistic Director of the Royal Ballet. He studied at the Hampshire School and The Royal Ballet Schools, before joining the Royal Ballet in 1961...
, by Philip Harris - homepage - www.philip-harris.com
- articles and media references