About The Work of: LauraLee K. Harris

From an article by Georges-Albert Aurier on Symbolism of Paul Gaugin's art in Le Mercure de France (1891), Genova recounts Aurier's five precepts toward establishing such a broader Symbolist aesthetic: "The work of art must be Idealist since its unique ideal will be the expression of the idea, Symbolist since it will express that idea through forms, Synthetic since it will compose those forms in a universally comprehensible manner, and finally (as a natural consequence) Decorative...The artist must have that transcendental sensitivity, so great and precious, which makes the soul quiver before the changing drama of the abstract. The aim of painting is to express ideas, by translating them into special language... The symbols emerge from the darkness and begin to live with a life which is no longer our contingent life, but a life which is the essential life, the life of Art, the being of Being." Albert Aurier, was the first to define Symbolism in art in an ambitious (and now canonical) article on Gauguin.

Mr. Aurier could be speaking of LauraLee K. Harris's works. Mississauga based, Harris' "special language" is spun from nature's spool of life. In her serene, sensual way, an intimacy of liquid longings of the unconscious are rendered onto a tree's core, the rings splayed out into plywood form. They are different but the same from where its life began, it lives once more, "universally comprehensible", under her brush. Harris has developed a unique work. She uses acrylic which follow the natural grain of the wood, signaling a balance between naturally existing patterns and her minds eye that enhances what she sees. Using birch, oak, fir, spruce pine and red gum, each differing wood grain, models both a surface to paint on and a formal conduit to paint from.

She possesses that transcendental sensitivity making "the soul quiver", in melodic lines that echo the grain and meander beyond its given design into pendulous, bio-morphic shapes, sometimes suggesting images within images. These images emerge from the darkness of the viewers mind, just waking. Evocative of the Surrealists' automatic drawings, Harris's paintings also bring to mind Rorschach inkblots. Both invite a raw response, direct from the unconscious. There's a playful quality to the exercise akin to pointing out recognizable shapes in passing clouds or as Leonardo did, using the confluence of the imagination to beckon figures from water stains on the wall. But Harris' paintings land somewhere between Rorschach and a dream layered in subconscious color where symbols are translated from the mind's eye into a changing drama of the abstract.

These phantasmagorical paintings are alive; their fine ribbons of line vacillating between chance and intention bespeak their origins of life. Harris' line has a siren's song quality to it - seductive, elusive, utterly graceful. It curls and flows lithely, sinuously with colors that are layered inside many coats of acrylic gloss. The luminosity of the work is reminiscent of watercolorists, but the color sinks deeper into the recesses of the wood, holding another dimension within its clear finish, similar to the Fresco paintings of early Italian Renaissance where the paint adhered to layers of a wet limestone wall rather than sitting on top of support materials such as canvas. But unlike the wet limestone wall, the life of the wood offers a new reality on this symbolist's journey. One that indicates where the brushstrokes will travel, a place already traveled in the grains that mark the timeline of a tree.

Harris is a profound poet. She takes you on a another journey, giving you a story for these luminous dreams offering them up in words and metaphor, pulling the imagery together into isomorphic form. With an introspective eye, she challenges us the viewer, to look deeper and creates dual sided words that play with the imagery, replicating the way the imagery feels, with an added expectation, that we are seeing into another world. The viewer's mind becomes the new landscape, the connection between worlds. Harris's balance is spiritually centered in her Native heritage of lessons about seeking the self with the intention of story telling. The feeling of the exhibition as a whole is one born of dreams, where the woken is dazed into introspective thought. "The symbols emerge from the darkness and begin to live with a life which is no longer our contingent life, but a life which is the essential life, the life of Art, the being of Being." Georges-Albert Aurier; over 100 years later, words to live by.