Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 17

Gregory Frank Harris
'Tea Party', New York Art Students League, Fechin Institute, Santa Fe, Large Oil

1981

About the Item

Signed lower left, 'Greg Harris' for Gregory Frank Harris (American, born 1953) and dated 1981. Additionally signed, verso, and titled, 'Stea Life in a Pond'. Framed dimensions: 34.5 H x 29.5 W x 2.5 D inches. The study of art and the history of art are closely intertwined in the work of Gregory Frank Harris which reflects his exploration of technique and art history. Born in southern California, Harris and his twin brother grew up in a family that embraced the visual arts as well as theatre and music. During his stint at California State University in Long Beach, he studied both art and theatre, but also began writing music, which then became his primary focus. Over the next decade, Harris and his brother played piano and drums respectively in a variety of bands, earning their living in the nightclubs and hotels up and down the west coast. The first sign of a new direction appeared while the band was on the road in Spokane, Washington where Harris rekindled his interest in painting. Like generations of artists before him, Harris turned to the old masters and the impressionist painters as sources for his study of painting. Harris was fortunate to have two of his copies, Rembrandt’s Woman with Pink and Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, selected as props for the 1982 film version of the musical Annie, directed by John Huston. Harris also began exhibiting at juried shows in 1982 and marketing his work nationally. Juried exhibitions--and awards--followed, including an unprecedented first, second and third place award in the popular vote at the historic Lyme Art Association in 2001. By the mid–1980s, Harris decided to leave California to study at the Art Students League in New York City, and he subsequently settled in Duxbury, Massachusetts in the 1990s. There, he continued his plein air painting, working with Wendy Martin who served not only as his model but also created the nineteenth century costumes seen in the images. A workshop at the Fechin Institute in Taos, New Mexico, however, lured him back to the southwest in 1996, and he spent the next four years living in Santa Fe. By 2000, however, he returned to New England, this time to Lyme, Connecticut where he taught private students as well as classes at the Lyme Art Association. During these years, Harris was also affiliated with the Putney Painters, a loosely organized group of representational artists centered around Richard Schmid and Nancy Guzik based near Putney, Vermont. Typically, a group of painters would arrive at the large studio barn every other weekend to spend their time working in the company of other artists and receiving casual mentorship from Schmid and Guzik. In 2003, Harris returned again to Santa Fe where he is surrounded by a landscape that offers abundant sites for exploring new dimensions in painting, and a city that is home to a thriving and diverse arts community. At the core of much of Harris’s work is a sustained dialogue between plein air painting and creating works in the studio. Harris offers a contemporary perspective on this duality, noting that plein air painting pushes him to develop his figural images more thoroughly in the studio. In his naturalist images, where he works with both models and photographs, he comments that it has become “very challenging to see how much better” his figural paintings have become as he has explored the landscape subjects around Santa Fe. In short, Harris’s curiosity about historical techniques combined with his study of the texture of paint and the elusive challenge of capturing light on canvas have all informed his growth as an artist. With thanks to Janet Whitmore, Ph.D. Awards: 2001 First, second and third place, popular vote, Lyme Art Association, Lyme, Connecticut 1994 First and second place, watercolor and oil painting, Plymouth, Massachusetts 1992 First place, oil painting, Duxbury Art Museum, Duxbury, Massachusetts 1985 First place, Juried show, Affair in the Gardens, Beverly Hills, California
  • Creator:
    Gregory Frank Harris (1953, American)
  • Creation Year:
    1981
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 27.5 in (69.85 cm)Width: 23.25 in (59.06 cm)Depth: 0.13 in (3.31 mm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
    painting: minor restoration, minor losses; frame: minor losses, minor restoration; shows well.
  • Gallery Location:
    Santa Cruz, CA
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU34411578902
More From This SellerView All
You May Also Like
  • Post-Impressionistic Painting From Saint Cloud, Paris, 1912 by Dick Beer
    Located in Stockholm, SE
    Dick Beer (b. London 1893 - d. Stockholm 1938) Saint Cloud, 1912 oil on board board dimensions 40.5 x 32.5 cm frame 51.5 x 43.5 cm signed Dick Beer painted 1912 Exhibited: The Swedish-French Art Gallery, Memorial Exhibition, Catalog nr 5, 1942 Provenance: A private collection, Sweden Dick Beer (1893-1938) Dick Beer was born in London in 1893. His father, John Beer (1853-1906), was a Swedish painter from Stockholm who had a career mainly as a watercolour painter with motifs of horses from racetracks and fox hunts from the countryside. Barely fifteen years old, Dick Beer became an orphan and came to Sweden in 1907. Already in 1908-1909, he started at Althin's painting school in Stockholm. And later, at the Royal Academy of Arts from 1910-1912. His teachers were, among others, Gustaf Cederström, Oscar Björk and Alfred Bergström...
    Category

    1910s Post-Impressionist Landscape Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

  • Modernist Landscape Oil Painting
    By Donald Roy Purdy
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Genre: Modern Subject: Figures Medium: Oil Surface: Board Country: United States signed lower left Donald Roy Purdy is an American painter whose work evolved through a range of styl...
    Category

    20th Century Fauvist Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

  • Fillette a la pousette - Figurative Post Impressionist Oil, by Victor Charreton
    By Victor Charreton
    Located in Marlow, Buckinghamshire
    Signed figure in landscape oil on board circa 1910 by sought after French post impressionist painter Victor Charreton. This charming piece depicts a young girl in a pink dress and ha...
    Category

    1910s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

  • Sankt Matteus Church in Stockholm, 1907
    Located in Stockholm, SE
    The painting we have for sale, executed by Swedish artist Erik Tryggelin on May 3rd, 1907, presents an atmospheric and dynamic view of Sankt Matteus Church in Stockholm. This piece i...
    Category

    Early 1900s Post-Impressionist Landscape Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

  • Marine Painting "Trois Pêcheurs" Louis Pastour (France, 1876-1948)
    Located in SANTA FE, NM
    "Trois Pêcheurs" Louis Pastour (France, 1876-1948) Oil on board Signed l.l. 7 7/8 x 4 7/8 (8 1/8 x 11 1/8 frame) inches Louis Pastour was called the “...
    Category

    1930s Post-Impressionist Landscape Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

  • Mother and daughter on the beach Spain oil on board painting marternity
    By Gabriel Casarrubios
    Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
    Gabriel Casarrubios Martín (1953) - Maternity - Oil on panel Oil size 22x27 cm. Frameless. Gabriel Casarrubios Martín (1953) The Toledo artist trained in Fine Arts in Madrid, at th...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Post-Impressionist Landscape Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

Recently Viewed

View All