As if by Osmosis
KERRY HARDING
Candida Stevens Gallery is delighted to present ‘As if by Osmosis’, a joint exhibition of new works by Kerry Harding, an English painter based in North Cornwall, and Lucas Reiner, an American painter with studios in Los Angeles and Porto. Both artists look to their surroundings for inspiration, focusing on the same subject matter for months or even years at a time. In Harding’s case, this is the coastal landscape that wraps around her and for Reiner it is the growth of trees within urban environments. Through these acts of sustained observation both artists have absorbed the ways in which external factors such as the weather, seasons, time and human intervention affect their subject matter, developing an understanding and connection that goes far beyond the visual. This level of intimacy is evident in their paintings, which soothe and disarm the viewer in equal measure.
Integral to both artists is the way they embrace the permeability of their chosen fabrics. Harding will often find the starting point for a new work on the back of existing canvases, guided by the marks that oils and bleaches have made from seeping through the canvas. A fortuitous incident earlier this year for Reiner, meanwhile, has led to an unorthodox approach to tempera painting on muslin, in which he applies preparatory gesso to the back of the fabric, pushing the substance through the weave to produce an irregular painting surface. For both artists, the element of chance and surrendering control to their materials is an important aspect of how they infuse their paintings with history and character.
Sharing the same earthly palette of blues, greys, yellows and reds, intriguing parallels between the ways both artists work begin to reveal themselves and provide an enriched viewing experience. The fragmentary and abstracted nature of Reiner’s work is complemented by the timeless and otherworldly feel of Harding’s landscapes. These are paintings not defined by the physical elements they represent but by the interaction between and sense of magnitude embedded in the shapes and layers used to form them.
Kerry Harding
Kerry Harding has always been a physical painter, turning, pouring and scraping her canvases as she seeks to convey a deeper understanding of her subject matter than its physical attributes alone. She describes moving to the coast of north Cornwall over twenty years ago as the moment when the landscape around her finally matched her way of working, the rugged coastline reflected in her weathered canvases. Living amongst her subject matter, every errand or task is an opportunity for the coastal landscape to absorb into her psyche, the unconscious assimilation of its characteristics at any time of day, in any weather and every season, that has led to an intimate understanding of its beauty.
The impact of this constant connection with her surroundings is palpable within a trio of large, square paintings that, despite depicting the same section of headland, are strikingly different in appearance and mood. One, with striped sky and mottled trees, immerses you in Cornish mizzle. Another, with blue, pink and yellow streaks in the sky will remind many of the aurora borealis that has delighted so many people in the south of England this year. Through an enduring proximity with an environment that is endlessly changeable and unpredictable, Harding has captured something of the timelessness of nature within her paintings that cannot be communicated in any single photograph.
Preventing any attempts to read her paintings as ‘traditional’ landscapes, Harding employs a number of pictorial techniques that purposefully disrupt each scene and challenge the viewer’s perceptions. This is beautifully demonstrated by a series of eight small-scale paintings that are unified by pine trees, trunks bent by the wind and canopies defiant as they project upwards. Highly detailed cloudscapes and rippling waves are overlaid by the trees, some presented as blackened silhouettes that seem almost cut out from the canvas, some appearing to be formed entirely of their surroundings as translucent shapes that mirror the scenery around them. The
effect is such that the eye cannot easily decipher foreground from background, horizon from coast line, or sea from sky, to create a forever changing impression of the landscape.
Citing Bridget Riley as a lasting influence, Harding’s interest in the optical-illusory potential of painting is evident in this latest body of work. From the use of stripes to modulate skies with unnerving regularity, the diffraction of paint to almost pointillist effect, to her ability to reproduce clouds and seas in hyper-realistic detail, Harding shares Riley’s ambition to challenge the viewer to be cognisant of the physicality of looking. Oscillating between highly detailed representation and surrealist impressions, Harding’s paintings elicit a range of emotions from unsettled to meditative that reflect the landscape’s continuing ability to surprise and delight the artist herself.
Harding speaks of her studio with passion, a private space where her need to paint is unleashed and she is free to make the mess her practice demands. By the time the artist completes a body of work, the floor is covered in great splashes of blue, white and grey paint, reminiscent of a great swathe of foamy sea spray cast off from the waves of painted canvases hung around the room. Knowing she has an affinity for the allegorical romanticism of Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), one can almost imagine Harding in her studio standing before her paintings as an incarnation of Friedrich’s most famous compositional device, the rückenfigur - a person standing with their back to us, contemplating the expanse of nature before them and soaking it all in.
Essay by Isabella Joughin
Talk not to me of summer trees, 2024
Oil on linen 90x100cm
Fainter leaves to further seasons, 2024
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
2024
Selected for Wells Contemporary, Wells cathedral Somerset
2023
When feeling out of sight
The Discerning Eye, selected by Peru Oshin, Mall Galleries London
2022
Edge of Day, Candida Stevens Gallery
Water and ways, Candida Stevens Gallery
2021
Little landscapes, Candida Stevens Gallery
‘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
‘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
2004
Solo and mixed shows, Lemon Street Gallery, Truro, Cornwall
Solo and mixed shows, Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire
2003
Residency, Perth International Arts Festival, Kidogo Arthouse, Perth, Australia
Goldfish Gallery, Penzance, Cornwall
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
Published in November 2024 by Candida Stevens Gallery on the occasion of an exhibition featuring the work of Kerry Harding.
Catalogue ©Candida Stevens Gallery
Photography ©Dan Stevens
Text © the authors
All rights reserved