Peter Harris

After Hours

18" x 48"

Oil on canvas

Behind Closed Doors

24" x 60"
Oil on canvas

February Evening

24" x 52"

Oil on canvas

Lakeshore Gas

20" x 30"

Oil on canvas

Urban Vista

30" x 48"

Oil on canvas

Streetcar 1 A.M.

42" x 24"

Oil on canvas

Night Vision

30" x 60"

Oil on canvas

Downtown 9 P.M.

24" x 24"

Oil on canvas

West On The 401

24" x 60"

Oil on canvas

Plant Doors

24" x 24"

Oil on canvas

(As usual, click on image to view a larger version)

I share studio space with a handful of some really talented artist's here at the Water Tower Studios. Each artist has their own private space to work in and as expected each one abides to their own schedule and work ethic. Sometimes days can go by before we see one another. With time I've come to know, respect, admire and learn a little bit more about art simply by watching and talking to Peter. One of the most talented, dedicated, disciplined and probably the hardest working painter I know personally. Anyway, for as long as I can remember, painting (in the traditional form), has always been something like magic to me. It's refreshing to see familiar urban Toronto landscapes that I see regularly, (but rarely take note of), being captured in such a beautiful traditional manner.

Artist Statement:

Exploring the contemporary urban landscape of my day to day life has been the focus of my work for the past nine years. Each oil on canvas painting begins with personal reaction to an urban space that I interact with daily, examining my relationship to the space as it alters with the changing light and under various weather conditions. Visiting at different times of day and night, I observe carefully the interplay between light and space and plan how to capture the tension present in outwardly public spaces transformed nightly to private, personal spaces. The night has always played an important role in my work as a formal element reducing the field of view and creating stage like settings for the urban landscape and as a psychological element reflecting my attitudes about the spaces I visit.

My paintings portray the common urban landscape that city dwellers inhabit, seek to make the ordinary seem extraordinary, and provoke the viewer to consider otherwise unremarkable spaces. The familiar parking lots and streetscapes of the city which are the settings for my work are painted in a solemn manner which imbues a common landscape with mystery, status and gravitas. Painted realistically, they appear as an accurate documentation of local geography, but often have specific recognizable elements removed to increase the universality of the landscape. By giving a sense of familiarity to the work, an entry point for the viewer to project themselves into the space is created, and asks of them to rethink their own relationship to their urban surroundings.

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Re-inventing a Genre: Introducing Peter Harris

Since the late fifteenth century, when landscape began to emerge as a distinct genre in western art, it has increasingly held the fascination of artists and collectors alike. In his book Landscape and Memory, Simon Schama goes so far as to locate this fascination in our ethnic psyche. Certainly for North Americans in the middle of the nineteenth century, landscape art fused the promise of the new world with the enterprise of incipient nationalism. Personal memoirs and correspondence of nineteenth-century artists are filled with detailed descriptions of the logistical difficulties encountered in packing easels, paints, and other materials into remote and inaccessible spots in order to capture the “view.”

But the landscape which fascinated North American artists of the nineteenth century is no longer the landscape we see outside of galleries and museums. Not only has the landscape itself changed dramatically, but so has our means of seeing it. While even the remotest places are accessible today, the means of access has altered our perception of them.

This consideration informs the work of Toronto artist Peter Harris. His landscapes are an acknowledgement that the landscapes we experience today are experienced from roads, bridges and man-made embankments. More appropriately, they are an acknowledgement that the means by which we see our land today have become part of the landscape itself. In Harris’s paintings, the topography is intersected or “framed” by bridges, culverts, telephone wires, light poles, and such. These may structurally complement or radically alter our interpretation of what we see. The natural and the artificial have become inseparable elements in our experience of the land.

Even the quality of the light, the prerequisite for vision, has altered our vision. In “Suburban Shift,” Harris compares the “landscape” under natural and artificial light, tellingly using the light pole itself as the focus of the latter image. The artist’s nocturnes provide us transformed landscapes in which artificial lights touch everything with a mysterious luminescence. “Night Vision” almost seems a conscious updating of Edward Hopper’s famous painting “Nighthawks.” Though the diner in Hopper’s painting has become a strip mall in Harris’s, both paintings convey a sense of loneliness and anonymity through the contrast of interior and exterior lighting. Harris obtains an effect similar to Hopper’s but through a much updated idiom.

Harris is hardly the first artist to treat this theme. What is important here is the overall tone of Harris’s work. Far too easily might the artist lapse into nostalgia or environmental polemic. Yet the tone of Harris’s paintings is neither bucolic nor political. It is dispassionate. The man-made features of this artist’s landscapes are simply there: facts of the way we see our world today. When we accept as such the roads, bridges, and poles, instead of trying to look around them, they offer a compositional beauty in their own right, just as the artificial lights mingle to create harmonies of color. Harris’s art seeks not to transform reality; it asks us to re-train our aesthetic sensibility to see what is before us.

-- JimHall, Oxford Gallery

Check out more of his work here... www.peterharris.ca

Kimpa Kisangameni - Franco & le T.P. O.K. Jazz 1983

One of the most influential and respected African musicians that ever did it. This track has been an incredible source of inspiration lately. Enjoy!

Brendan Fernandes: Until We Fearless

North American white-tail deer decoys wear Masai masks in Brendan Fernandes’ installation Neo-Primitivism II, in 2007.

By Leah Sandals, National Post

All eyes are on Africa during the World Cup, but what Africa are we seeing exactly? These types of questions get a savvy artistic treatment in the work of Brendan Fernandes, who migrated to Canada from Kenya as a youth. With his first museum solo show just opened at the Art Gallery of Hamilton and his status as a Sobey Award finalist secured, Fernandes spoke to us about masks, migration and myth-making.

Q: Your new show promises to push viewers to reconsider their perceptions about Africa. How so?

A: I use things that are considered stereotypically African and try to be critical about them. In one video there are African masks speaking to each other, while another video juxtaposes Masai warriors walking for tourists with supermodels walking a runway. Dialogue is what I want to create.

Q: Why are African masks so important in your art?
A: When my family left Kenya, we started to buy African masks. These things had never existed in our home until we left. Then, in New York, I saw immigrants selling Kenyan Masai masks that seemed to function as symbols of all Africa. In some cases, they even functioned as souvenirs of New York! Researching the masks was a way of trying to identify my place in the city. I’ve also looked at masks in museums, where their tribe might be listed but not their use. I’m interested in how the utilitarian gets lost in migration. That extends to me, too — when I left Kenya, I spoke fluent Swahili, but now I can’t.

Q: How else did your childhood migration to Canada influence your work?
A: Kenya is diverse. My ancestors are from Goa, which was part of Portugal until 1961, but also Indian. So in Kenya we were “Goan.” But when I came to Canada, people were like, “You’re not Goan. You’re Kenyan.” Kids in school would ask, “Can you tan?” Actually, because of that, I once did a piece where I tanned and documented skin changes! They’d also ask, “Did you have elephants in your backyard? Did you live in a city?” I actually lived in Nairobi, so it was a culture shock moving to a small Canadian town. Also, people wouldn’t just ask, “What is Kenya like?” They’d ask, “What is Africa like?” But Africa is a very deep and complex continent. Dealing with that complexity, and the complexity of cultural identity in general, is important to me.

Q: Elephant questions aside, animals are a recurring theme, particularly deer. Why?
A: To me, deer, particularly female deer, are about hybridity. There are deer in Kenya and Canada and India. And while male deer species are distinguished by their horns, female deer look a lot alike. Also, growing up in Kenya, my father worked in tourism and we spent a lot of time on safari. I became very nostalgic about that after we left; some of my works talk about predator-prey relationships, because witnessing a kill is a big — and kind of bizarre — part of safari.

Courtesy Diaz Contemporary Animation stills from Dada Afrika I-IV, 2010, by Brendan Fernandes.

Q: What inaccurate ideas about Africa do you think are being presented through the World Cup?

A: I spent two months last summer in South Africa, so I saw some of the buildup to the Cup. I think these large events always get certain things covered up. During the Vancouver Olympics, a large homeless community seemed to get shuffled out. At Expo 67 in Montreal, Habitat was supposed to be this utopian housing scheme, but ended up being for the upper class. Things like that are happening in South Africa — I wonder how the buildup will be sustained. During the games you also see people wearing helmets with deer horns on them, you see safari culture, you see particular textiles. So the semiotics of Africa are definitely being played.

Q: Some of your works reference voodoo. What have you learned about that?
A: Well, it’s a religion — like any other — that has created a lot of fear because of its ideas of spiritual takeover. There’s a lot of stereotypes about what it is. The title of the show, Until We Fearless, kind of plays on that. When we don’t understand things, we create fears and myths around it. That relates to the whole continent of Africa in a way. The idea is we need to understand things more so we can fear them less. If I do some research and you do some research, maybe through that process we’ll become more unified.

Animation still from Dada Afrika I, 2010, by Brendan Fernandes.

–Brendan Fernandes: Until We Fearless is on until Oct. 3 at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Visit artgalleryofhamilton.com for more information.

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A friend of mine here at the studio sent this article my way... thought it an interesting read. More importantly, definitely worth driving to Hamilton to check this one out.

Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition 2010

If you live anywhere near Toronto, it's definitely worth your while to come and check out all the artwork that will be on display at Nathan Phillips Square starting today (July 9, 2010).

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Don’t miss the more than 400 artists on the square. Participants will exhibit in 14 different categories including ceramics, digital media, drawing, fibre, glass, jewellery, metal, mixed media, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, water colour and wood.

TOAE is the largest juried outdoor art exhibition in Canada that offers a fresh-air alternative to conventional art shows and galleries. TOAE is a charitable non-profit organization supported by a group of volunteers active in the art and corporate communities. No percentage of the artists' sales is taken by the organizers. TOAE gratefully acknowledges the support of its many sponsors and award donors.

For more information, visit www.torontooutdoorart.org

Chimala Missionary Murals

"A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to carry on ministries of the word and literacy, or ministries of service, such as education, social justice, health care and economic development." -Wikipedia

As the definition suggests... missionaries can play a very important role in a community. Sometimes, this is more evident in the remote villages of Tanzania, like Chimala. I had an opportunity to take a little tour of the missionary grounds. I thought these larger than life murals were an interesting addition to the otherwise very quiet and simple environment. More importantly the subject matter they chose to display to their guests.

Raza

I first learned of this Tanzanian artist through my aunt a few years ago. Raza was her instructor when she was attending some university classes in Dar es Salaam way back in the day. Although, she no longer pursues art as a career, she made sure I follow up with him while I was there. Luckily, one of my uncle's went out of his way to help me track down his art gallery/home in Dar es Salaam. It took a bit of searching and local help, but we eventually got a hold of him. And needless to say, I'm glad we did.

As usual, a Tanzanian's welcome can be embarrassingly warm and open-ended, (if they are comfortable around you). It didn't take long before Raza's passion for his work started to pour out. Naturally, I shared some of my work with him and the conversation picked up steam. He ended up showing me an incredible amount of artwork that he had hidden away in his home. Sketches, drawings, paintings, finished and unfinished works just kept coming out. He has been painting his whole life, I believe he is in his late 50's if not early 60's so you can imagine the quantity and quality of his work. His paintings have been bought and commissioned by multiple galleries and personalities around the world, including the current Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete. Before I left, he ended up helping me out with what I consider the greatest gift I've received from someone who barely knows me. I'm not even sure if he knows just how much he's helped me out! In any case, its all work in progress.

Unfortunately, since he does not have much of an internet presence I can not direct you to anything else. But if you happen to want to learn more or get in touch with Raza, feel free to email me at hanspoppe@gmail.com and I may be able to pass the information over to you.