Artist in Focus: Simon Harling

August 4, 2017

Morning Light, Departure of 'Patricia' Oil on canvas, 36 x 46 cm

Boat Landing Near Glendale, NH, Evening Oil on canvas, 30.5 x 61 cm

Quick Review
Born: 1948, Colchester, Essex, U.K.

Lives and works in New Castle, N.H, USA
Studied: London College of Printing.
Work: Harling is interested in the American scene and American cars, although his works are based on a more direct observation than the romanticised renditions painted by many other Hyper-realist artists, Harlings paintings have the ‘foreign- eye’ effect. His paintings offer an angle of vision from which Americans would never see themselves. His urban landscapes hold a narrative quality which allows the viewer to escape from reality whilst imagining the situation at hand… Who is behind the wheel of that Cadillac?
Publications: Exactitude; Hyperreallist Art Today. John Russell Taylor (Thames and Hudson)

State Pier, Portsmouth, NH Oil on canvas, 61 x 91.5 cm

"Our lives are a journey through a changing landscape. These landscapes become associated with the emotions we experience as we pass through them. Some of these associations are so common that they become a language which can be universally understood. A ship departs at dawn, a car travels on a road at night, a solitary figure contemplates distant horizons at dusk; these are all images which have a resonance beyond the surface narrative, suggesting various emotions such as loss, hope or communion".

- Simon Harling