David Harrison's paintings are very odd - even eccentric - and very English. There are a few fairy folk in there, along with the great crested grebes, the barn owls, the scrupulously detailed butterflies, the bowler-hatted urban fox. A long-tailed tit feeds her clutch, nested in the eye socket of a grinning human skull.The struggle of all living creatures to thrive and secure their existence within it, is a central theme in Harrison's work.
Birds, plants, animals and humans, both real and imaginary, spiritual, pagan and symbolic, take their places in his compositions, engaging the viewer and encouraging us to look beyond what we know to be existent. This is again the case in Spirits Drifting, in which night-dwellers awaken a cast of nocturnal creatures, led by a swooping, screeching bird of prey. Painted with a puzzling precision, not unlike Surrealist dreamscapes of the early 20th-century, even familiar devices and objects begin to appear strange and out of place.
Harrison’s works are created on surfaces ranging from rough wooden panels to larger canvases and vary from intimate, naturalistic studies to elaborate compositions. They are unified by Harrison’s approach, which combines the fantastical with the real, the magical with the everyday. His paintings often tell of man’s impact on nature and of nature settling scores in elaborate twists of fortune. Surrounded by the dirt, detritus and blighted urban decay of humanity, his creatures inspire a sense of wonder and remain powerful witnesses to man’s vanity and foolishness.
Harrison is an artist attracted to the day-to-day oddities that are often overlooked by most people. His paintings are populated by fantastical characters and wildlife placed in eerie, otherworldly settings. Taking traditional subjects of landscape and myth the artist creates magical tales that are relevant to our time and make strange our relationship to the natural world.a fantastical cast of ghostly characters is engaged in an orgy of sexual activity. At least one of them, sat on the burgundy sofa beneath a pair of winged, garlanded cherubs, appears to belong to an age long since past; the Erotic Dead, referred to in the painting's title. Two other figures, silent witnesses swathed in sheets, look in through the window. Behind them a contemporary urban landscape lights up the night sky. |
