First Open Studio Show and Sale December 1-2, 2012

Our pink house in the country was turned into an art gallery last weekend for my first Open Studio Show and Sale.

All kinds of people came and were kind enough to engage in detailed discussions with me about the paintings.  I learned a lot about my inspirations and processes from their questions! It was fun, informative and exciting!  

View #7 Nightwood I 
8x8 Acrylic on canvas (sold)

When someone falls in love with a painting and NEEDS to live with it it is a huge thrill for me.  I know from my own experience of building my own small art collection that I must feel that I cannot live without the piece of art that calls to me, that it is going to nurture me, inspire me and be an ever changing companion.  Because that is another thing original art does - it changes with us, it grows with us, it responds to shifts in light and weather and to our moods.





During the open studio visitors really slowed down and took their time looking at everything.  They could even pick up paintings and carry them into different light situations to see it in different ways (yes, please touch the art!) 

It is fascinating to me why someone responds to certain paintings more than others and to have a chance to discuss this in depth is a gift to both of us.  The visitor has a chance to learn more about the piece directly from the artist and a chance to visit the space an artist has created to work in.  The artist meets visitors directly and can also receive new insights into their own work.  It's cool!

In my open studio I showed, for the first time, a series of gouaches, mostly on Italian Fabriano Tiziano paper that I have been painting in Montréal in a luminous 20th floor condo overlooking Parc Lafontaine, downtown and the St Laurence river.  This is a project that I called "Continuo" after the idea of shifting multi-tracks of colour, reminiscent of the way I compose music and soundtracks in the recording studio.  Even while being created in the Montréal studio these paintings are still extremely influenced by my life with the woods and skies and waters of the countryside.

I paint on black and white papers and each background creates a different feeling of anticipation.  I wait for a colour to call, whites and blues especially pop right out of the black paper, so does one of my favorite highlight colours, Bengal Rose.  You can see an example of the vibrancy of Bengal Rose in the gouache at the bottom of my blog (Red Blues)

Gouache is more opaque than water colour, though also water based.  It is more densely pigmented and suits my love of colour that one can sink into with one's eyes, be dissolved into...

Untitled 22x29.5 gouache on St-Armand paper

This one above is inspired by bark on ancient trees, river flow, sedimentary rock layers.  It is on handmade St-Armand paper, papermakers established in the Pointe-St-Charles area of Montreal in 1979. This paper resembles felt, or blotter paper and the paint sits on it like layers of fabric. (www.st-armand.com) 

I thank everyone who visited and shared their thoughts and impressions with me...and to those of you moved enough by certain pieces to take them away to hang in your homes and workspaces, adding a piece of my vision of the world to yours....

Anonymous Influences

I wrote this blog years ago 

and am posting it for the first time in 2021.

I hope you enjoy one artist's now historic slice of Montreal life.

Anonymous Influences

Graffiti - Stencils - Street Art

Let me get one thing straight right off. 
I'm not talking about thoughtless angry meaningless scrawl 
across your local bus stop or mail box.  
I get as annoyed about that as the next person.  

When I'm working in my Montreal studio, twice a day (in between focused painting sessions with refined gouache on Italian paper!) I pound the pavement...long walks through the quartier, camera in hand, down the ruelles, the laneways of hidden gardens, garages, back balconies between each street.  That's where the anonymous art is and I have developed an addiction to collecting it.

There are currently close to 400 photographs 

that I have taken between 2007 and 2011
within an area of approximately 10 city blocks 

east of Rue St-Denis to Rue de Lorimier 
and from rue Ste-Catherine Est north to Boulevard St-Joseph.

I'm not academic about it.  I follow my nose and I've learned to read the traces at the corners and know if some daring artist/criminal has risked exposure by going further down the lane away from the quick escape route of two streets.  I've learned to recognize certain signatures and likely target spots.  I've seen beautiful murals covered over. I've seen tag over tag over tag.  I've seen the frustration of garage owners as their garage doors, a favorite target - that beautiful big framed surface, are sprayed again and again.  

I have been delighted and amazed by the talent 
and sometimes dismayed and outraged by the defacement.  

Mostly I document without comment, 

without geographical notation, without judgement. 

Once I stumbled across a ruelle free from graffiti, yet decorated by its' inhabitants, called rue "Modigliani", where original paintings hang on the walls of the outdoor sheds and the children have claimed the garden fences and garage doors for their own artwork.  

The artwork in this lane is respected, 

there are hardly any tags, no stencils over...  Hmmm.

There are trails to seek out and follow - of stencils repeated in one location after another...

Pourquoi tuer? (Why kill?) 

Sortez d'Irak (get out of Irak), 

Art is Over Here, Montréal

Perhaps not unexpectedly, the gesture of graffiti seems to have crept into my own artwork as a result.  The arcing spray line from a can of paint translates into sweeping brush strokes and freer gestures than I was capable of or ever envisioned before.  The rich fearless colours, the layering and detachment from earlier ideas, covered up without regret, even with a certain reckless abandonment...these elements encountered in the urban laneways have been exciting additions to the way I approach the art I make.

Allyna Harris Untitled 2010 gouache on Arches (sold)

Allyna Harris Untitled 2010 gouache on Arches

I walk the underbelly of the city and it takes me 

to another place in my artmaking. Techniques are subliminally absorbed from the street and free up my own. 
The experiments, the creativity, the visions, the surprises, the defiance of it all gets tamed down on paper and canvas to a more contained self expression.  The freedom of expression found in those empty back alleys is a continual inspiration to me. 

 I cruise the development of the street art genre that pulls together pop culture,  the faded layers of stucco and brick and gyprock and cement, the 'seize the moment' attitude that defiantly decorates a broken doorway, a barred window, 

an old telephone pole, a garbage bin.   
I keep on documenting anonymous street art 
even as the debate rages about it's presence and illegality.

wooden door, detail, Montreal

I am unapologetically grateful to these other artists who 

are so driven by their vision that they risk arrest to express it. 

Montreal wall

To me these are treasures of visions otherwise unseen, voices otherwise unheard. 

They are the gestures of free spirits among us, anonymous outsiders making themselves visible, making art that could be gone again in days or even hours, art that might be painted over that ubiquitous garage door grey before anyone even has a chance to see it.  To me this ephemera of human traces and political statements is more positive than negative, more affirmative than angry, more evidence of life and passion 

than the dry coldness of unmarked crumbling infrastructures.

Art made by people without studios or expensive paints, 

papers, canvas, galleries, press, etc.

What is destroyed in order to create?

What is created only to be destroyed?

Montreal lion wall

All photographs property of Allyna Harris.

Please do not use without permission.
To see more of my artwork visit www.allynaharris.com

I am excited to be included in the upcoming "Tempo" music themed group show at Studio Georgeville in the lovely rolling hills of Quebec's Eastern Townships. Vernissage is August 18 - check out their web site for more details www.studiogeorgeville.com
Everyone welcome!

Allyna Harris, Rinpoche 2011, 30x40" acrylic on canvas (sold)

Here are some thoughts about my current paintings and the artwork for the Georgeville show:

My art reflects a desire to create visual works that are intuitive and authentic — paintings that offer contemplative moments of gazing; opportunities for the viewer to create a personal narrative; and imaginary worlds that invite us to enter through shifting perceptions.

Much the way one note transforms into another in a musical composition, one painted layer after another is covered over, masking and partitioning, shifting our point of view by creating intimate spaces within outlines which are, in turn, part of larger pictures.

I compose these paintings as improvisations, responding to the resonance of colour and form and the texture of the markings, with the attention of one musician listening and responding to another.

I paint the way I improvise music: line on line, colour on colour, texture on texture, rhythm on rhythm, and the finishing touches of dynamics and articulation.

I am also fascinated by the philosophy and accoutrements of Tibetan Buddhism : chanted prayers and prayer flags, embroideries and colour symbology, weavings and open sky landscapes, love and compassion.

Few of us experience an untamed wilderness free from" the constructs of the human mind" (Ram Dass). I am grateful for my daily access to the natural world, the influence it has on my paintings and my music making and how it allows contemplation and creative translation of the ephemeral energy of living things.

Light and shadow, movement and flow, ripples and spirals, skies through branches, forests, landscapes, fire, rain, earth and unforlding seedlings...these are some of my inspirations.