When Feeling Out of Sight KERRY HARDING
When Feeling Out of Sight KERRY HARDING
Candida Stevens Gallery is proud to present When Feeling Out of Sight, an exhibition of landscapes by Katharine Le Hardy and Kerry Harding, an exhibition that showcases the emotional potential of landscape painting. Despite their highly distinctive styles, there is an intriguing overlap in the practice of both artists. Following an intuitive process of mark-making they layer their canvases as they build their compositions to create scenes that are informed by their experiences but shaped by their imaginations. In their most recent work, Le Hardy’s impressionistic landscapes brim with feelings of escapism and nostalgia, whilst Harding’s abstracted views invite the viewer to meditate on the beauty of nature as it passes us by.
Kerry Harding
Kerry Harding’s immersive new body of work invites the viewer to slow down and linger a while. Enveloped in cloud and rippling waves, dreamlike abstractions of the Cornish landscape possess a timeless quality reflective of the enduring inspiration and comfort that the artist derives from her surroundings. Presented without specific reference to time of day, season or place, these are works that encourage the viewer to experience the reassuring omnipresence of sea, land and sky.
Process is central to the creative development of Harding’s landscapes, which evolve over many months. Finding inspiration in existing marks, she creates her landscapes from old canvases, flipping and turning them as she strips back the paint to find the starting point for a new work. The artist then builds new compositions using a variety of techniques, building layers of freely applied washes and hyperrealistic detail.
Citing the influence of Milton Avery and Jean-Édouard Vuillard, in this series Harding has taken a freer approach to the pairing of flattened planes alongside delicate detailing, producing landscapes
that play with the viewer’s perspective of space and movement. In many cases they offer a surprising stillness and calming presence; the fleeting movement of cloud and sea is bound by the crisp outline of the coast whilst translucent silhouettes and bleached skies cast a soothing glow over the landscape.
Early in her practice Harding frequently used textiles, sewing together fabrics and stitching into canvases. This has had a lasting impact on her painting, with questions of how texture and space can be represented in two-dimensional form remaining fundamental. It has also informed how she approaches painting, recreating the therapeutic nature of undertaking needlework in her creation of intricate detail.
Sinking into the meditative process of making in this series, Harding has likened the feeling of comfort she gets from the landscape that surrounds her to that of a patchwork blanket. In many ways this can also be seen as a metaphor for the process she has undertaken. Like the quilter who turns remnants of fabric into an object of comfort, Harding has brought pieces of her memory and imagination together to create a series of landscapes that allow us to appreciate the reassuring beauty of nature.
Isabella Joughin
So easy to the sky, 2023
And measure with the clouds, 2023
unapproached it stands, 2022
Further in summer than the birds, 2023 Oil on canvas
Seeks faintly for its shore, 2023
Oil on canvas
tumble from the clouds,
For that peninsula, 2023
Oil on canvas
An easy breeze to put afloat, 2023
The fathoms they abide, 2023
Should entow the day, 2023
Oil on canvas
80 x 50 cm
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
‘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
Catalogue © Candida Stevens Gallery
Artwork © Kerry Harding
Photography © Dan Stevens
All rights reserved
