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Brent Harris Art Collections

Shop for artwork from Brent Harris based on themed collections. Each image may be purchased as a canvas print, framed print, metal print, and more! Every purchase comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Artwork by Brent Harris

Each image may be purchased as a canvas print, framed print, metal print, and more! Every purchase comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

About Brent Harris

Brent Harris Brent Harris, whose home and studio are in Pacifica, California, hails from Indiana. He moved with his family to New England before he started first grade, where he lived until he graduated from high school in 1970. The following summer he hitch-hiked to California. He met the woman who became his wife and they have lived happily in the San Francisco Bay Area since.

Grounded by his upbringing in the values of Middle America, his view of the world and his art draws its main influenced from the diversity found in coastal cities. Always an imaginative and creative child, his family moves sometimes left him to entertain himself until he made new friends. His first official foray into art came in a Junior High School art class. Unfortunately, his early creative ambitions far surpassed his talent and his teacher advised him not to consider art in his future plans. Young and sensitive, Harris believed her. He still doodled and dabbled, but he never thought of this as art.

In California he gained knowledge and hopefully some wisdom through a number of usual and less usual jobs and volunteer opportunities. After his prosaic start on the east coast as a paper boy, then a super market bag boy, a theater usher and fast food worker, Harris became the youngest driving instructor in California, at that time, followed by fast-food and restaurant management. He next worked as a letter-press and offset printer, which led to a career in graphic arts. As a production manager for a printing and lithography firm, his job included printing World Series, Playoff and Rose Bowl tickets as well as other major events. Later, while working full-time for a color separator who produced film for magazine advertisements, he completed his B.A. in cinema, twenty years post high school. His emphasis on film writing put him in touch with other filmmakers in the area and gave him the opportunity to serve as a film-festival juror at both the San Francisco International Film Festival and the United Nations Association Film Festival (UNAFF) at Stanford University.

His creative drive manifested not only in the written word, but also in other areas.He has, crafted, created polymer clay figures, sewn art quilts, clothing and three-dimensional fiber art. He found a way back into the kind of art he pursued in Junior High School in a three-weekend class studying color pencil art. He found that he had some skill and took semi-private lessons for two years. His background in color and design from his career, his sense of story and flow from his writing and international travel informed his sensibilities and execution. Yet, he had still not discovered his metier.

During the first decade of the 21st century, the company Harris thought he would retire from closed, followed by unemployment and various jobs over the following ten years as well as health problems and surgeries. The economic downturn, at one point, left him unemployed for two and a half years. Ultimately, for his art career, this proved fortunate. Trying to improve his chances for employment, he took internet-focused classes, at his local community college, which included art and design classes. Here, Harris had his first experience using oil paint and an epiphany. Literally from the first time he put paint to canvas, he felt he had found what he had been looking for and had come home. That was in the winter, 2008. During the next three years, he painted more than forty pieces. Although he does not discount his fiber pieces, this felt like the beginning of his life as an artist. There have been delays, bumps and bruises along the way, but Harris is more driven and creative than ever.

In 2012, he took a serious fall that resulted in seven stitches in his forehead and a sideways Harry Potter scar. After delayed physical therapy, he and his wife went on a long-dreamed-of trip to Kenya. The beauty and grandeur of East Africa was underscored by roads which ranged from adequate to uneven corrugated, the presence of armed guards and searches everywhere they went, including the local supermarket. Although not focused on it, they felt the underlying tension from seeing compounds, walls, barbed wire and automatic weapons everywhere, counterpointed by slums, roadside shanty businesses and animals they had seen only in zoos, now backed by forests, savannas and city-scapes.

Two days before Harris and his wife were to return home, they were car-jacked at gunpoint losing most of their money and belongings. Yet they walked away alive and mostly physically unharmed. Harris managed to save the memory card from one of his cameras and this, combined with two shoulder surgeries (one each side) led him to where he is today. While his output slowed, his focus on painting never wavered and he has painting again with zeal since the beginning of 2014.

Harris trained more formally at Skyline Community College with Paul Bridenbaugh, Noah Buchanan and Eileen David, having previously studied with Julie A. Andrews. Harris has consistently been chosen to exhibit in juried shows, both in galleries and online. He was the winner of the July 2013 ArtQuench.com show, Summer, having received two awards of special recognition in their prior show, Self Discovery. He received a third-place finish from ArtSceneToday.com in their Joy to the World show. He has often been a finalist and has received honorable mentions in several gallery shows. He views this as preparation to where he is today.

Harris came to painting, to art, late in life by some standards, but like Athena leaping full grown from forehead of Zeus: He has come armed for the fray and applies himself with a will. As a Wikipedia entry has it, Athena is goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill. Athena is also a shrewd companion of heroes and is the goddess of heroic endeavors.

Harris thinks this, as a description of a creative life in our modern world, is well suited to our reality. Honest creation, creation from the heart, spirit and mind, no matter what our age or the age of man, requires courage, inspiration, strength, strategy, art, craft and skill. In this time where callous greed, corrupt self-interest and unmitigated contempt for humanity and our home, Earth, appear rampant, pursuing art is a hero's journey. It is a just battle and we who have undertaken this quest need to cultivate bravery, humility, strength, and whatever help, support, or inspiration the universe presents or provides.

As Harris expressed it, Violence proliferates, the climate degenerates, and our hopes appear to evaporate. Artists, the creative among us in all fields, not just what is by tradition referred to as art, challenge us to examine our follies and admit our imperfections through their continual striving to express the best of themselves. But they also challenge us by direct confrontation, holding mirrors to our perfidy, sometimes simply by presenting something so honest, so striking, beautiful and true that we must acknowledge our weaknesses and seek our higher selves. We may smile or nod, laugh or cry, or show no indication we have been changed, but we remember love, hope and laughter and we understand that every living being shares these same emotions. We see something so incredible in itself, so obviously art, that we are struck to our core with its blinding beauty and transformative power, even if the surface appears hideous or causes pain, fear and sadness. After we have seen it, experienced it in whatever form it takes, we will be forever changed, unable to live as we did previously.


See more of my creative offerings and opinions at:

Pen’s Might

Philip Brent Digital Art

Scriggler TPM

Niume

Vida Voices

The Extra Mile
Art, shirts and other gift items

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Artist's Statement

I strive to create art which resonates as well as appeals, which adds color, beauty and joy to life, and perhaps brings a smile to someone's day or helps them question their assumptions. I hope my art makes you think, smile, laugh, or cry, that it touches you viscerally, reaching your mind, body, and spirit. With so much turmoil in our world and uncertainty in our lives, my art is intended to remind us of the beauty and goodness in the world, but also to challenge us. My art questions our ideas and beliefs and encourages the artist and the viewer to see the world in new ways. Through my choice of unexpected subject or execution, I attempt to shatter our ingrained expectations, the scripts we live. Only when we gain a new perspective are we able to change. I remind myself of this with computer shorthand, WYGIWYSNISM (what you get is what you see, need I say more), which also describes my art.

I strive to produce the best of which I am capable. However, like life, I believe our best work cannot be sterile, crisp, clean, devoid of vitality, but necessarily will be difficult, uncomfortable at times, and viewed most honestly warts and all.

Brent Harris

Brent Harris Fine Art
Pacifica, CA
brentharrisfineart@gmail.com
650.515.0514


Commissions Accepted