Kerry Harding, Edge of Day by Candida Stevens Gallery

Kerry Harding Edge of Day

12 Northgate, Chichester West Sussex PO19 1BA +44 (0)1243 528401 +44 (0)7794 416569 info@candidastevens.com www.candidastevens.com

Of Their Peculiar Light Of their peculiar light I keep one ray To clarify the sight To seek them by Emily Dickinson Candida Stevens Gallery is proud to present Kerry Harding’s debut solo show, Edge of Day, a new body of work that puts the peculiarity of light at centre stage. Set against the backdrop of the rugged coastline of North Cornwall, these are the unique moments, often experienced at dawn and dusk, when clouds, landscape and sunlight combine to create fleeting encounters with the extraordinary and sublime. Manifestations of the artist’s memory and imagination, they are the views remembered long after their physical presence has vanished. In Harding’s works, seemingly familiar scenes are distorted, their elements manipulated such that they cannot be pinpointed in reality. Instead, they exist hazily, some bleached by light and others cast in shadow; a single tree glows under the sun’s rays, a haloed rock floats on the water’s surface, a ploughed field shines on a blackened hill. At the very moment the landscape begins to come into focus, the view is disrupted once again; a tree painted in startling cobalt blue hovers on the surface; a white line cuts across the coastline, morphing from tree trunk to river to road. These are the moments of unpredictability that surprise and delight. Working exclusively in oils, Harding plays with perspective using a variety of techniques. Leaves and clouds, painted with photorealistic precision, sit over freely applied washes of paint. Translucent layers expose ghostly imprints that have seeped through the canvas from the other side. Elsewhere, pigment soaks into sections of canvas rubbed bare to give an inky depth and almost velvety feel to the surface. In this way the works are suffused with a sculptural beauty that mirrors the landscape they represent. Key to their creation, the paintings have often lived many lives. The canvases are repeatedly reworked, sometimes over several years, and bear the scars of being layered with paint, stripped and scraped numerous times. Centuries of erosion and deposition that have formed and continue to shape the coastline, are mirrored in this physical working and reworking of the surface. It is this process that gives the paintings their authenticity. They carry a history that draws the viewer in. Poetic titles, given in honour of Emily Dickinson, pair beautifully with each work and provide the language to describe them. They remind us that they have been inspired by the startling moments felt when the sun sits low in the sky and enjoys playing tricks on its audience,

sometimes dancing with the clouds as it works its way above the hills, sometimes ebbing away in a cloak of pink. These are the characteristics that root Harding’s practice in Romanticism and it is notable that she cites both Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774-1840) and Gerhard Richter (German, 1932 - ) as major influences on her work. A key protagonist of the Romanticism movement, Friedrich sought to demonstrate that nature can elicit an emotional response in its viewer. The interaction of light on the landscape was key to the way he imbued his paintings with spiritual feeling, with dawn and dusk featuring prominently in his works. Whilst Harding’s works are free of the religious overtones present in the nineteenth century, it is this similar exploration of the extremes of light that gives her works their metaphysical quality. They are atmospheric, serene and disconcerting in equal measure, resonating most strongly in feeling above all else. The direct influence of Friedrich on Harding’s practice is best demonstrated through comparison of Friedrich’s radical work The Monk by the Sea, 1808-1810 and Harding’s An Island Soul to Sea, 2022. Composed in horizontal layers of land, blackened sea and a sky that turns from white cloud to blue, in Friedrich’s painting a solitary monk stands on a dune overlooking a vast expanse. In Harding’s version, the figure is replaced by a sparse row of pine trees, stooped forward against the wind as they project over the stark line of the horizon. Like the monk who becomes almost lost in the sea that he stands before, Harding’s trees are dwarfed by the clouds above them and, in both paintings, it is nature’s ability to overawe and overwhelm in its beauty and magnitude that is most strongly felt. It was this question of nature’s beauty that saw Gerhard Richter, an artist whose sixty year career has spanned several mediums and genres, begin to produce hyperrealistic oil paintings of landscapes and seascapes in the late 1960s, through the replication of photographs. To him, this method of production became a means of abstracting the subject from the reality, reintroducing the beauty he felt had been lost in the autonomy of photography. Distinctly anachronistic within the art world at this time, he explained that he enjoyed the “subversive quality” of painting beautiful landscapes using this technique. The idea that landscape painting can be subversive appeals strongly to Harding. Like Richter, her process relies heavily on the use of photography of her surrounding landscape and yet she does not seek to replicate real life. Instead, she looks to her photographs for reference, inspiration and reminders, selecting the elements that most appeal and disregarding those that do not. In this way, Harding manipulates photography just as she does her processes until she achieves that crucial “moment of enlightenment”. It is this distortion of reality that results in those moments of the uncanny and surreal. Far from the antiquated notions of classicism, the kitsch or the sentimental, what Harding aptly demonstrates in this latest body of work is that contemporary landscape painting can and should be viewed as a genre that continues to offer ample opportunity to challenge, engage and excite.

Isabella Joughin

She dropped as softly as a star, 2022 Oil on canvas 120 x 150 cm (123 x 152.5 cm framed) 8

And morn should beam, 2022 Oil on canvas 110 x 150 cm (112.5 x 153 cm framed) 10

An island soul to sea, 2022 Oil on canvas 120 x 120 cm (123 x 123cm framed) 12

The earth and I, alone, 2022 Oil on canvas 110 x 120 cm (112.5 x 123 cm framed) 14

The hills undress, 2022 Oil on canvas 100 x 120 cm (102.5 x 122.5 cm framed) 16

If as days decline, 2022 Oil on canvas 101 x 120 cm (103 x 123 cm framed) 18

In a serener bright, 2022 Oil on canvas 90 x 100 cm (92.5 x 102.5cm framed) 20

The ebbing day, 2021 Oil on canvas 90 x 100 cm (92.5 x 102.5cm framed) 21

The summer of the just, 2022 Oil on canvas 90.5 x 100 cm (93 x 102.5cm framed) 22

Days departing tide, 2022 Oil on canvas 90 x 100 cm (92.5 cm x 102.5 cm framed) 23

The tidy breezes, 2022 Oil on canvas 90 x 100 cm (92.5 x 102.5cm framed) 24

A certain slant of light, 2021 Oil on canvas 98 x 73.5 cm (100.5 cm x 76 cm framed) 25

Whose leaf is ever green, 2022 Oil on canvas 70 x 90 cm (72.5 x 93 cm framed) 26

Pink shadow, 2021 Oil on canvas 90.5 x 70.5 cm (92.5 x 72.5 cm framed) 27

Whether to Isles enchanted, 2022 Oil on canvas 90 x 70 cm (93 x 72.5 cm framed) 28

The unsuspecting trees, 2022 Oil on canvas 90 x 70.5 cm (93 x 72.5 cm framed) 29

Prodigal of blue, 2021 Oil on canvas 80.5 x 80.5 cm (82.5 x 82.5 cm framed) 30

Evergreen blue, 2021 Oil on canvas 70 x 50 cm (72.5 x 52.5 cm framed) 31

Night did soft decend, 2021 Oil on canvas 60 x 75 cm (63 x 78 cm framed) 32

Night is the mornings canvas, 2021 Oil on canvas 90 x 65.5 cm (92.5 x 68 cm framed) 33

Gathered from the gales, 2022 Oil on canvas 60 x 50 cm (63 x 52.5 cm framed) 34

Saves she all that for sunsets, 2021 Oil on canvas 65 x 90 cm (68 x 93 cm framed) 35

Sinking down in its tranquility ii, 2022 Oil on canvas 35 x 50 cm (37.5 x 52.5 cm framed) 36

Only a breeze will sigh, 2022 Oil on canvas 50 x 35 cm (52.5 x 38 cm framed) 37

Of a tint so lustrous meet, 2022 Oil on canvas 35 x 50.5 cm (37.5 x 53 cm framed ) 38

EDUCATION 2000-03 MA Painting, Falmouth University, Cornwall 1991-94 BA Hons Fine Art, Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University 1990-91 Foundation, Mid Cheshire College, Cheshire SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 2021 ‘Being with Trees’ The Arborealists, The Bermondsey Project Space, London ‘Being with Trees’ The Arborealists, Gustavo Bacarisas Galleria, Gibralta ‘Weathering the Storm’ Candida Stevens Gallery, Chichester, West Sussex ‘Wider than the Sky, Deeper than the sea’ The Stratford Gallery, Gloucestershire ‘Painted Postcards’ Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall ‘The Top 100’ The Auction Collective, The Department Store, Brixton, London Livingstone St Ives, Cornwall 2020 The Arborealists at The National Memorial Arboretum, Staffordshire ‘Postcards from the edge’ The Byre Gallery, Cornwall Cor Gallery, Falmouth, Cornwall ‘Ocean Anthology’ The Stratford Gallery, Gloucestershire ‘Can you see the sea’? Livingstone St Ives, Cornwall The Art Buyer, Upstart Gallery, London 2019 ‘Breath’ The Stratford Gallery, Stratford upon Avon ‘Where the land lies’ The

Byre Gallery, Cornwall The Princes Trust Auction, Highgrove, Gloucestershire The Arborealists at The Collegiale Sainte-Croix de Loudun, France ‘The Spring Auction’ The Auction Collective, Menier Gallery, London ‘Spring’ Cornwall Contemporary, Penzance, Cornwall Far & Wild Gallery, Perranporth, Cornwall Axel Arts, Bath 2018 ‘Winter at The Byre’ The Icing on the Cake ‘Winter Exhibition’ Cornwall Contemporary Gallery Far & Wild Gallery, Perranporth, Cornwall The Arborealists at St Ives Society of Artists, St Ives Cornwall Artwave West Gallery, Dorset The Byre Gallery, ‘Hidden Depths’ The Arborealists with Paul Nash at Black Swan Arts, Somerset The Arborealists at John Davies Gallery, Gloucestershire ‘Spring show’ Cornwall Contemporary Gallery Penwith Gallery, St Ives, St Ives School of Painting tutor show ‘Spring Show’ Artwave West Gallery, Dorset ‘Winter Show’ Cornwall Contemporary Gallery, Penzance, Cornwall 2017 ‘Into the Woods’ The Byre Gallery, Cornwall ‘An Everyday Intimacy’ solo, Beside the Wave, Falmouth, Cornwall Membership to Arborealists Winter show, Circle Contemporary, Cornwall 2016 ‘Special Collection’ Badcocks at Beside the Wave, Falmouth ‘There and back again’ with Marion Taylor, Penwith Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall ‘Featured Artist’, Bath Contemporary Gallery, Bath Denise Yapp Fine Art, Monmouth 2015 Penwith Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall 39

‘Cornwall Untitled, Badcocks Gallery at Beside the Wave London 2014 Hilton Fine Art Gallery, Bath Penwith Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall 2013 ‘Coast Matter’ Solo show, Heseltine Gallery, Truro 2010 NSA Double Vision, Exchange Gallery, Penzance 2007-09 Micheal Obert Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa 2007 ‘Sun, Aloe, Rain’ Solo show, Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire 2006 Solo and mixed shows, Lemon Street Gallery, Cornwall Winter Exhibition, Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire 2005 NSA at Thompsons The City Gallery, London NSA critics choice, Lemon Street Gallery, Cornwall Solo show, Lemon Street Gallery, Cornwall Dundas Street Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland Miami Art Fair, Florida, USA

Solo and mixed shows, Bishop Phillpotts Gallery, Cornwall Shortlisted for ROSL scholarship 2002 Bishop Philpotts Gallery, Truro, Cornwall Northcote Road Gallery, London 2001 Winter Exhibition, South West Academy of Fine and Applied Arts, Exeter, Devon Solo exhibition, Phoenix Gallery, South West Academy of Fine and Applied Arts, Devon Northcote Road Gallery, London 2000 Solo and mixed shows, Clapham Art Gallery, London 1999 Solo and mixed shows, Clapham Art Gallery, London Euroart, Berlin, Germany Teaching 2014-21 Tutor, St Ives School of Painting, St Ives

2004 Solo and mixed shows, Lemon Street Gallery, Truro, Cornwall Solo and mixed shows, Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire

Published in May 2022 by Candida Stevens Gallery on the occasion of an exhibition featuring the work of Kerry Harding

2003 Residency, Perth International Arts Festival, Kidogo Arthouse, Perth, Australia Goldfish Gallery, Penzance, Cornwall

Kerry Harding Edge of Day