Connie Harrison

Connie Harrison graduated from Chelsea College of Arts after completing a foundation at New College, Nottingham. Recent solo exhibitions include, ‘In Midst, Unfolding’, Informality Gallery, Cromwell Place, London (2023), ‘Knitted Hedges’, Blue Shop Gallery, London (2023), ‘Nurtured Furrows’, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh (2022). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at LBF Contemporary (2024), Guts Gallery (2024), Delphian Gallery (2021), Flowers Gallery (2020), among others. Connie Harrison engages with the natural world as both muse and subject. She works by overlaying landscapes with different compositions and building up an overall heightened sense of reality. Using a process of applying layers of paint separated by coatings of translucent wax paste. She scrapes back into the paint to reveal the layers, excavating the composition in an almost sculptural way. Layered brushstrokes of colour are applied in combinations that gradually build up to depict natural forms and elements of landscapes. Floating between foreground and background, in and out of familiarity. Unfolding, overlaying and entwining, the work stimulates movement and depth to the imagery as if they are growing. Her process is similar to that of natural rhythms and circular life cycles. The paintings grow organically, layer by layer, working on and developing both an underlying and a super-imposed image. Very deep in places and in others more exposed to reveal earlier traces of the painting below. Working sensitively, she attempts to unearth a form from the materials or to strip away the marks of old interventions to get to an early and evocative form. Through a desire to find solace and slowness, Harrison connects her labour-intensive, process-driven way of working to unconsciously and intuitively allow the energy of the natural world to flow through her work.