Richard Harrison English, b. 1954
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Biography
Richard Harrison was born in Liverpool in 1954. He read Medieval History at Cambridge University and then received BA and MA Fine Art degrees in Painting from Chelsea School of Art. The critic Brian Sewell was an early champion of Harrison's work. He recognised its committed, insistent nature and described the artist as 'a visionary prophet' and his paintings as 'big, bold, beautiful and threatening'.
His abstract landscapes are rich in colour and texture with generous lashings of paint, which ebb and flow on the canvas reflecting turbulence and often violent upheaval. Harrison's paintings are awesome in scale; their content exaggerated by the vigorous and robust handling of voluminous layers of paint adeptly manipulated to create a dynamic expression of form and colour which resonate all-over the canvas thus underpinning the powerful emotional and visionary themes ever present in the artist's compositions. The artist strives for an intensely uncompromising and powerful effect, which he describes as 'no half measures'.
These are 'Romantic' paintings, concerned with struggle, the 'sublime' and intense emotion. They are rooted in the artist's desire to experience more than the everyday and a frustration with the tedium of a highly mediated and disassociated world. He aligns himself with his historical heroes: Goya's sombre imaginings, Turner's evocations of elemental power and Bacon's existential despair. He sees them as fellow outsiders enacting a Nietzschean contest for mastery of the self. We see him as the mounted figure carving a path through a sea of paint.
Works
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A Walk In The Woods, 2024Oil on canvas70 x 65 cm
27.6 x 25.6 in -
If The World Should End, 2021Oil on linen180 x 150 cm
71 x 59 in -
The Last Journey, 2021Oil, acrylic, pastel & charcoal on linen152.5 x 122 cm
60 x 48 in -
We Are As One, 2020Oil on linen213.5 x 183 cm
84 x 72 in -
When Skies Are Blue, 2020Oil on canvas122 x 183 cm
48 x 72 in -
When Skies Were Green, 2020Oil & acrylic on canvas122 x 183 cm
48 x 72 in -
It’s Been A Long, Long Time, 2019Oil on linen183 x 213.5 cm
72 x 84 in -
Veils Of Mist, 2019Oil & collage on linen150 x 200 cm
59 x 78.5 in
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Exhibitions
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Richard Harrison
10 Apr - 4 May 2025Richard Harrison was born in Liverpool in 1954. He read Medieval History at Cambridge University and then received BA and MA Fine Art degrees in Painting from Chelsea School of Art. The critic Brian Sewell was an early champion of Harrison's work. He recognised its committed, insistent nature and described the artist as 'a visionary prophet' and his paintings as 'big, bold, beautiful and threatening'.Read more -
Turbulent Materiality
11 Jul - 12 Oct 2024This summer Pontone Gallery mounts an exhibition of painters who are all obsessed with the materiality of their medium, which they each manipulate with a distinct and intense singularity.Read more
Malcolm Liepke’s paintings assert his skilful and graphic iterations of human flesh in all its forensic intimacy. His gestural and fluent handling emphasises the delicate, bruised tones of his male and female models, framed by a bright and acidic variety of rich colour.
Timothy Spall elicits a profound spiritual response with a dark and brooding landscape that contains a discrete, but explicit, description of the crucifixion at Golgotha. Misty veils of charcoal greys are penetrated by shafts of sulphurous sunlight to reveal a tragic scene, glimpsed from afar but unmistakable.
Richard Harrison deploys vigorous and expressive passages of highly worked paint. Clots, clumps, streaks and sticky accretions are distressed and agitated by the artist’s urgent hand, eager to fashion an image of primal landscape from a chaos of turbid material.
Henry Jabbour explores a rich and sumptuous palette of shimmering primary hues. Glistening oil paint is freely applied in thick, creamy skeins and slicks against saturated, liquid glazes. Vestigial romantic figures hover in this world of subtle, painterly abstraction. -
A New Home
2 Mar - 30 Apr 2023This exhibition marks the occasion with a selection drawn from the gallery’s extensive list of international artists, including many previously exclusive to The Albemarle Gallery. The presentation focusses particularly on...Read more -
Richard Harrison
A Painter's Progress 4 - 27 Mar 2022The viewer’s eye is dazzled by volcanic eruptions of elemental colour. Harrison’s palette is highly registered; primary and secondary hues dominate, making for strong contrasts and rich combinations. This lends...Read more
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