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| Lally's Alley ink and paint on canvas digital rendering 12"H x 36"W 2020 |
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
Monday, August 24, 2020
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Monday, January 1, 2018
Saturday, March 11, 2017
'Earth Drawing' in the Negev Desert
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| Harryn 'Earth Drawing' in the Negev Desert, 3.2017 |
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| Earth Drawing No. 1 |
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| Earth Drawing No. 6 |
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| Earth Drawing No. 9 |
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| Makhtesh Ramon No. 1 |
Saturday, March 4, 2017
J. Brooks Joyner essay ...
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| VERTIGINOUS, 80"H X 96"W. 2009 © Harryn |
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| VIEWS OF A SECRET No.5, 26"H X 30"W. 2009 © Harryn |
Brooks Joyner on Paul Harryn …
When I experience the magnificent sunsets over the Wyoming landscape here in Casper, I am reminded instantly of the extraordinary paintings and visual expressions of Paul Harryn. His merging of art with nature and the essential ingredients of life is unique.
The brilliant solar colors on the surface of random wind-shaped clouds reflecting the migrant sun on the horizon combine with the churning blue waters of the Platte River, blowing sands, vagrant tumbleweed, and other natural phenomena to mesmerize me, capture my consciousness, and transport me to a state of otherworldliness and spirituality – much the way Paul Harryn's paintings transfix me and urge me to explore and discover my subconsciousness.
About three years ago, when I met Paul Harryn at his studio and was introduced to his work for the first time, I was staggered by the subtle power and dynamic energy that his paintings express. I was immediately drawn to the conclusion that this man deserved an important solo exhibition at the newly reopened Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley. I believed that such an initiative would bring to the Art Museum an exhibition that would have appeal, impact, and importance for every visitor. It would create not simply walls with multiple abstract images but a space that would generate a physical, visual, and lasting emotional experience for everyone.
Based on my historical art research and obsession with Abstract Expressionism for many years – including an in-depth study of the legacy of Arshile Gorky, the Armenian-born American artist, and Jackson Pollock, the icon of American non-objective art – I felt that I had discovered another master descendant of abstraction in Paul Harryn, who had taken the ingredients and process of action painting to an entirely new and different level.
That remarkable level of imagination and discovery is brilliantly described in the catalog essay by my colleague and friend, Robert Metzger, who has also transformed by the amazing technique, vision, and experimentation that Paul Harryn's paintings embody and transmit to every beholder.
Through artistic expression, Paul Harryn's paintings capture the elements and process of change and evolution, whether this phenomena are atmospheric, cosmic, microscopic, or even psychic. His art is laced with the materials of nature and the dynamics of natural forces. His paintings reflect personal physical exercise as well as intellectual and emotional release, like a symphonic performance using special instruments and tonal punctuation.
I am honored and delighted to have been part of the initiative that has brought the great achievements of artist Paul Harryn to a broader public audience, and concurrently to recognize him personally for renewing our sense of joy and delight with natural phenomena and human creativity.
J. Brooks Joyner, Museum Director. Casper, Wyoming 2013
from Paul Harryn 'Essence of Nature' exhibition catalogue preface 2014
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| Paul Harryn & Brooks Joyner at Riegelsville Inn, 9.2013 |
Thursday, March 2, 2017
Michael Lally essay ...
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| TO RESOLUTE DECISION, 43"H x 60"W, pastel and paint on paper, 1988 © Harryn |
When I first encountered Paul Harryn's paintings and drawings, I thought of the "scratching" and "sampling" in "rap" records – the noise behind the rap. When you first hear it, it can sound confusing, jarring, aggressive, deliberately abrasive sometimes – even crazy – and yet almost always familiar.
The same can be said for Harryn's artworks, on first viewing them.
Poet Ted Berrigan said: "No ideas but in juxtapositions" (his appropriation of Carlos William's famous dictum, at least to some poets, "No idea but in things"). "Scratching" – picking up sometimes a fraction of a bar of music from an already available record and playing it forwards and then backwards or at higher speeds – and "sampling" – using a musical phrase from an already existing recording as it was recorded, and then perhaps repeating it in ways that change its original intent – are used in juxtaposition to each other creating an entirely new language of 'musical" ideas.
It's like creating a new language from bits and pieces of various old languages. It's like creating new art from bits and pieces of old art. We've seen it done before, to some extent, throughout the history of art, to a greater extent throughout the history of 20th Century art, collage for example.
Now comes Paul Harryn with his unlikely choices and juxtapositions.
He seems to be playing the same kind of intellectual and technical game the d.j.'s are playing with their audiences and with themselves. And just as in early rap most of these games were about speed and virtuosity, so too the early work of Harryn's I saw. But as rap is becoming more refined and focused, and in so doing - more diverse, so too Paul Harryn's work.
I don't want to beat this rap analogy to death, but it seems appropriate, because the work has been created during and has been affected by the times; only whereas one reflects the impact of these times on young black men schooled in the vocabulary of the various traditions of black popular, and not so popular music, the other reflects that impact on a young white man schooled in the vocabulary of the various traditions of white popular, and not so popular, art.
And the "d.j.'s" bring to their art as well, their own interpretations and distortions of white culture, and so too does Harryn bring to his art his own distortions of non-white culture – from Aboriginal Australians to native Americans. In both instances I believe I can see a quest for spiritual recovery from the soul-destroying effects of so much of contemporary existence.
So, I guess I'm saying, Paul Harryn is a paintbrush/drawing pen "d.j." laying the groundwork for some overdue "new" ideas.
Michael Lally, September, 1989. Santa Monica, CA
From "SIGNALS & CELLS", 1988 - 1990. Series Catalogue.
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| Michael Lally, Paul Harryn, Miles Lally, LA, CA 1988 Harryn - Moon Tigers opening |
James F.L. Carroll essay ...
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| "On Stage', and 'Archetype I' in progress |
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| ON STAGE, 9'H X 7'W, 2010 - 2013 © Harryn Studios |
Paul Harryn by James F.L. Carroll …
For nearly four decades I have been privileged to know, see, and watch a number of individuals grow into exciting, mature, working artists. Paul Harryn is one of them – a highly motivated artist who has persistently forged his path through full-time dedication to art for more than thirty years.
Like life, his work is composed of one layer at a time – often including simultaneous and interactive elements that crescendo into richly layered objects of substance. Objects, whose images are selectively stratified as the result of experience.
For Harryn, location is very important. He integrates the Spirit of Place into his work. His home-studio is in the forests along the Delaware River between Bucks County and the Pocono Mountains in eastern Pennsylvania. But this is only one of his work places, as he has also been producing art along the Pacific Ocean and deserts of California for the past twenty years.
He works, as Nature does, in the transformation of seasonal changes. When he is unable to complete a work he waits until the cycle returns, causing some paintings to take years to complete.
Harryn's work is derived from circumstructure and happenstance - from serendipity and calculation - from a learned and intuitive affiliation with environment, materials, and relevant contemporary issues. Knowing how and when to mindfully respond is part of Harryn's alchemy and magic.
Essay from "NATURAL SELECTION", September 2012, New Arts Program exhibition brochure.
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| James Carroll with "Selective Memory" and "Pacificus" at Harryn's studio (9.2012) |
Sunday, February 12, 2017
John Yau essay ...
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| Second World, 1988 - 90. Paul Harryn |
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| On a Ray of Winter Sun, 2012 - 13 © Paul Harryn |
Paul Harryn by John Yau
In his paintings, Paul Harryn investigates a territory that is located somewhere between knowing and imagining, seeing and dreaming. I say "somewhere," because, while the paintings evoke such familiar places as a moonlit lake, they resist becoming depictions of a landscape, a scene of something we might encounter in the world. Harryn's paintings do not propose to be about the natural world, though many of the images populating them resemble "things" we see or have seen. But resemblance can be slippery, a kind of ghost. And it is this slipperiness, this ghostliness, that suffuses through Harryn's paintings.
Among the models of understanding Harryn eludes to, one could include molecular biology, wave theory, Surrealism's belief in dreams, certain aspects of Abstract-Expressionism, neurobiology's attempts to understand memory, and fractal structures. While many of these models, particularly the ones rooted in the sciences, are used to sum up some understanding of perception, Harryn in not content to restate these models in visual terms. Rather, he effectively combines a wide range of disparate information in order to suggest a constantly transmuting world, a world where nothing is ever still.
Lines become traces of light, and, in turn, the traces become vectors of pure force. The fluidly shifting space of the paintings opens out onto vast domains, while at the same time isolating signs of the invisible worlds inhabiting everything we see. It is a world in which numerous events are occurring simultaneously, a place where sudden as well as constant change is the norm.
One could say that Harryn's paintings are like windows opening onto the mind's teeming processes, its on-going activity, its attempt to understand all the manifestations of the world it inhabits. We are reminded that thoughts are constructed of both language and a chain of chemical reactions. We can not have one without the other. In his paintings, Harryn makes scientific images and imaginative instances coincide. The paintings address an impossibility; the brain able to think about itself while attempting to understand the world.
Thursday, December 8, 2016
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Monday, January 28, 2013
January Moon ...
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| Oculus No. 3 |
" Years ago you said,
"In essence, I am matter of light."
And even now, whenever you rest
on the broad shoulders of sleep,
or even when they cast you
on the numb breast of the sea,
you seek corners where the blackness
has worn off and does not persist;
groping, you search for the appointed spear
to pierce your heart
that it may open to the light."
"On A Ray Of Winter Sun" George Seferis
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
neuro series, update ...
the 'neuro series' is now archived and uploaded to paulharryn.com ...
also, see essay by Joel Weishaus ...
Friday, January 1, 2010
being and becoming ...
"being and becoming what?", pastel on paper, 1988.
aptly titled for a guy who hasn't posted anything on this blog for eight months ... and the answer to the question is a book in itself - a good book - because it has been one of the most artistically productive years of my life in terms of setting objectives and achieving them ...
no fanfare, grandstanding, or heaps of public adulation - quite the contrary - just slow, methodical, and long deliberate days of hard work with a pile of personal breakthroughs ...
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Saturday, February 28, 2009
"placid blues" ...
the development of "placid blues" ...
[ 14 images ]
3.5'h x 16.5'w, acrylic paint on wood.
november 2008 - february 2009.
[ 14 images ]
3.5'h x 16.5'w, acrylic paint on wood.
november 2008 - february 2009.
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