Newsletter #210: June, 2024
© Chris Harris. All rights reserved
Welcome everyone,
We are very much enjoying being home in the Cariboo this summer; catching up with friends who we have not seen since before Covid. Rita is enjoying the garden and I am excited to be involved in a number of photographic projects.
In this Newsletter I am thrilled to announce a new project, discuss a conversation about an expressive technique, and share some imagery from two recent photographic trips. Here we go!
Announcing a New Project
From 2016 to 2023, I was involved in co-teaching ‘Discover your Creative Vision’ workshops. Prior to that, I had begun to study art history, and to place an emphasis on exploring new ways of photographic expression using only my camera—no software.
Inspired by courageous and masterful painters, who in the last two centuries led art movements into unchartered waters, I attempted, in my own way, to do the same within the medium of photography, and then pass these ideas on through the workshops.
On December 10th of last year, Rita and I gave a presentation here at the Gallery which included a short talk on some of my latest photography. Rita’s daughter Teresa, a student of the arts, was in attendance, and upon feeling the audience’s interest, she later asked me if we could combine our interests to start a series of presentations together.
I was thrilled at the thought of speaking to the arts with my step-daughter; a talent in the field. An idea was born.
Approaching Classic Art Movements Through Photography
Teresa and I are inviting you to join our presentation, but first, I asked Teresa to introduce herself to you.
Teresa
In the article below titled “Inspiration, Affirmation, Encouragement – A Conversation with Howard Hodgkin”, Chris vulnerably tells of the resonance he found with Howard Hodgkin in their mutual love of framing as a compositional element and expressive tool. For me, this illustrates the beauty of the ability for artists to be in conversation with each other across time, space, and medium.
Hello, my name is Teresa Donck-Matlock. I am a preparator, an emerging curator and writer, and Chris Harris’s step-daughter. I have enjoyed an up-close view of Chris’s work for over twenty years. I recently completed my Undergraduate studies in Art, Performance, and Cinema studies at Simon Fraser University. Contemporary art, as it is practiced in this moment and time, contains a heavy awareness of how it is in conversation with the art of the past. As I was studying contemporary art and its intentional conversation with past art movements, Chris began his new phase of photographic expression. As with many contemporary artists I was becoming familiar with, I watched Chris take up conversations with painters of the Impressionist, Expressionist, Cubist, and many other art movements through his own medium of photography.
Together Chris and I would like to invite you to a presentation where we talk about the context of classical art movements, and how Chris started a conversation with these past artists and their technique, philosophy, and expression. The presentation will take place September 22, 2024 at the Chris Harris Gallery. More details will follow in upcoming newsletters, and online at chrisharris.com.
Bio:
Teresa Donck-Matlock (She/Her) is an emerging writer and curator of Belgian and Canadian Mennonite descent. She is dually based on the unceded territories of the Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc and Tsq’escenemc as a grateful but uninvited guest. Teresa holds a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Art and Performance Studies, and minoring in Indigenous Studies from Simon Fraser University. She is currently the Assistant Preparator at the Kamloops Art Gallery.
An Impressionist rendition of Barkerville; a conversation with 19th century Impressionists
This image, as Teresa mentioned above; ‘illustrates the beauty of the ability for artists to be in conversation with each other across time, space, and medium’.
Invitation:
Rita, Teresa, and I invite you to join us at the Chris Harris Gallery on September 22, 2024, at 2pm. Door opens at 1:30.
Mark the date in your calendar. We welcome all who are interested and able to come.
Inspiration, Affirmation, Encouragement
A Conversation with Howard Hodgkin
After my book publishing career, which comprised mostly of representational image making, I embarked on a new phase of photographic expression; one that expressed myself in new ways, yet always made within the limitations of my camera.
I mention this because my personal artistic values would not allow me to import foreign elements from a distant place and time and insert them into my image captures. For example, in good conscience, as referred to below in the image titled ‘Grassland Sky’, I could not make a landscape image and then replace its sky with one from a foreign location and different time, and then publish it as a landscape I created. That sky belongs somewhere else and does not fit my personal sense of purity of photographic process.
In 2018, while exploring expression, I made the following image; a reflection in a beaver pond. The frame was made from a darker fir forest above the pond.
Beaver Pond reflection
When I saw the image on my camera’s LCD screen, I felt a tinge of excitement. Rather than discard the expression as a failed experiment, I decided to pursue the concept of framing.
Later, further down the road, I made the following image. Likewise, the frame consisted of the aspen and fir forest in the mountain foothills.
Marble Mountains
In 2019, during a photo workshop on Gabriola Island, I introduced the framing technique as a possible style of photographic expression. The image below was a local illustration of the technique’s potential.
In this instance, the frame was made with the mountains that can be seen in the distance beyond the island lighthouse.
During a Montreal workshop, I made the following image; another illustration of the technique’s potential.
Framed in fall colours
In each of the above images, a reality was framed with the organic elements of its immediate surroundings. None of the frame contents were imported from a different time and place using computer software.
From 2020 to the present day, I have continued using this style of expression. What has changed is that the pictures within the frames have changed from realities to abstractions.
An abstract narrative framed in granite
An abstract narrative framed in salt
Sleeping Figure by Howard Hodgkin Venice Evening by Howard Hodgkin
Recently, while pouring through the Tony O’Malley art library, I came across an exhibition catalogue titled Howard Hodgkin: small paintings 1975-1989. It is filled with dozens of Howard’s paintings which were on tour in Europe.
When I am experimenting with photographic expression, I am often surrounded with doubt. When does a photographic creation have artistic value? When are experiments in expression abandoned or pursued? These decisions are often made by the artist as a result of their emotional response and art literacy; how much they have read, listened to, and learned from art of all mediums, artists, art critics, curators, and art historians.
All of Hodgkin’s paintings in this exhibit catalogue included an apparent frame; each frame painted as a separate element yet part of the entire painting. Although the frame provides an illusion of depth, together they are seen as one entity.
I was thrilled to both see and study his work, for it gave affirmation to my photographic processes and expressions. The art of Howard Hodgkin has become a major inspiration for me in my work.
Overgrown
Encased
Heavens above
Etched in stone
Sky blue
Lost in a forest
Insight
Shapes within shapes
Red framed in white
In all my above photographs, the inner abstract picture is contained within a frame created from the same place and of the same subject. They are integral to each other, coming together to form the whole.
I feel that the organic connection between the outer frame and inner picture is essential to the narrative; a narrative expressed through texture, colour, and tonal values.
I’m excited to continue refining this process as it has led me to a deeper consideration which I greatly enjoy.
Where I have never stopped before
One of the things I enjoy most during the Cariboo spring season, is jumping in my truck and heading out on a road trip with my camera. I never know where I might stop and what I might photograph. It’s a journey filled with excitement and surprise as I listen for the voice that tells me to stop. With camera in hand, I follow that energy.
When I leave the highway to travel along a dirt back-country road, the first thing I do is reduce my speed to a crawl. No longer needing to think of speed limits and semi-trucks on my tail, I also reduce my pulse and elevate my sense of perception and observation.
What a start to my journey. I never would have seen this Sandhill crane if I had been going faster than 25km/hr.
For an unknown reason, a nondescript alkali lake in the distant grasslands had my foot on the brake. Never had I stopped here during the 25 years of travelling this road. Swinging my camera bag onto my shoulders, I headed off to see what had called me there.
As I approached the shallow lake, textures and subtle colours began to appear. I had an inkling why I had stopped.
The fractured layers of mud were like quicksand, preventing me from getting closer to the colours and the water.
Fractured fractals
An expression of beauty
Shapes of textured colour.
A grassland sky.
My sense of ‘purity of photographic process’ does not allow me to replace a sky with one from a foreign place and time; however, I do enjoy creating a more interesting sky from the tonalities of my immediate surroundings. The colours and textures are, therefore, naturally connected to the native landscape.
Where I have always stopped before
There is another place along the dirt road where I always stop, especially in early spring. It’s a small riparian area where the colourful blossoming of various trees and shrubs provide a feeling of softness to the landscape.
I often sit down here and enjoy a sandwich. It’s a landscape that welcomes me to stay.
Riparian splendor
An impression of riparian colours.
Some shrubs display a sense of movement and playfulness. In reality, however, these shrubs are without life. They were unable to make it through the winter.
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