William Harsh
Painting, Printmaking
991 Tyler Street #201
Benicia, CA 94510
707-745-8501

 

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williamharsh@mac.com


William Harsh is an artist who has lived and worked in Benicia since 1986. Primarily an oil painter, he also works with various water media and with monotype printmaking.

Raised in Europe and the U.S., he studied painting at Boston University with Philip Guston and James Weeks, and for many years taught studio art at colleges and universities in New England and the Bay Area.

He currently teaches monotype printmaking in Arts Benicia's Education Program. His work is included in many collections in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.


William Harsh, Farrago, monotype, 22" x 18 1/4"

 

From imagination and memory, I draw in thick oil paint, constructing forms to expose the emotive power of physical, tactile imagery. Through many re-configurations of what first emerges on canvas, intensities of color and movement arise.

Jerry-rigged assemblies, sometimes fortress-like in appearance, get built up and 'set' in ambiguous spaces. Mix-ups in 'representation' occur.

If all goes well, space becomes alive in its compression, ordinary objects become mutable, and unnamable forms adopt the authority of 'thingness'. Estrangement compels the surprise necessary to finish a picture.

For me, the whole ensemble becomes a curiosity, the way driftwood piled high on a beach or junk piled up in a studio corner can suggest a drama. A finished picture must feel at least as real as an unexpected or dismantled monument.