ARTIST BRIAN HARTE
INTERVIEW WITH ARTIST BRIAN HARTE
Artist Brian Harte (b. 1978) lives and works in County Tipperary, Ireland. Graduating with first class honours BFA degree at the Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork. Harte works mainly with large-scale canvases and is concerned with the investigation of composition and the relationship between abstraction and figurative painting. His work is represented by galleries worldwide and belongs in both public and private collections.
I work from a small studio at the rear of our home in rural county Tipperary in Ireland. It looks more like a garden shed than a studio from the outside. The location of where I make work is key to understanding the content and personal symbolism in my paintings. Working so close to our home it is inevitable that the setting has infiltrated my work. The home acts for me as an arena for the paintings, a set where we enact all our dramas and potential.
Some Highlights Brian
Recent highlights include the acquisition of two of my paintings by Kunst Museum Wolfsburg, Germany for their permanent collection. I also recently published an extensive 138 page hardback catalogue of my work from the last five years, titled ‘Bread ( and other paintings)’ in association with GNYP Gallery, Berlin. It was hard work putting it together but is was a remarkable achievement because of the people who contributed to it and designed it. I’m very proud of it.
Your greatest inspirations or influences?
If you become a student of art you will find those artists, living or dead who help you understand yourself and give you a direction to follow, be it in installation, performance or painting. I will not list the artists who have interested me as we’d be here all day. There is another side to inspiration and art. Hockney said it best, “Inspiration never visits the lazy”. Perfect.
Tell us a bit about your creative process?
My process is to get into the studio every day and work. Everything is chaos until you organise it somehow. If you’re a painter it is important that you can work in a rhythm and hold a regular conversation with the images and yourself. The results of this determined process are invariably the key to stronger work and growth as an artist.
Work you are most proud of?
My children. (laughing)
Things you are looking forward to in 2021
This year is busy for me. I’m working towards two solo shows this year. Italy in March with Annarumma Gallery in Napoli and in November with Signs Gallery in Istanbul. I’m also in the process of making some prints of my work this year which I’m really looking forward to seeing the results of.
How has this year changed your creativity?
I’d like to say something interesting here but I’ve just carried on my process in the studio that I’ve been developing over the past few years. I do think the work has become less about my immediate surroundings and more about wider concerns. The past year and its drama will be filtered through culture one way or another.
Anything else you'd like to share..
Buy art if you like it and from living artists please
IG; @brian__harte
