Artworks by Stephen Howard Harrison

Artist - Painter - Living in Scotland.

I attended Edinburgh College of Art where I obtained a BA in Drawing And Painting and also a Certificate in Post Graduate Studies in Drawing and Painting. 

I paint with artist's oil paint on canvas and sometimes on prepared board. I am interested in combining post impressionism with expressionism. I find ideas for paintings just by going about my everyday life and keeping on the lookout for good views or scenes that I feel would make a good painting. I never find it difficult to find subject matter. However, I spend a lot of attention on choosing views I want to paint. This process is helped by getting to know a place very well over a period of time. I like to work on compositions that I feel capture the essence of the place so that I can express what I want to say about it.

The great thing about having original paintings in the home is that you get to live with them, to see them in different light, or in different moods. To find oneself looking at them by chance, or deliberately. It is very different than seeing them on line or in a gallery or a publication or reproduction. 

I like to make paintings that reach out into the space of the room in which they are placed.

It is the sense of positivity that I get from painting that inspires me to continue. Painting makes me feel good, especially when it goes well. I hope that is communicated in my work.

I feel that being a painter is very like being in a relationship - but with painting itself. The relationship has a life of its own. I like to follow where it leads me. Ideas for paintings lead on to further ideas and so on. 

I find it very rewarding to know that many of my paintings are in private collections all over the world. I very much appreciate it when someone feels strongly enough about my painting to make a purchase.

My practice is informed in part by an immersion in the study of the works of successful artists. It comes from a great love of painting that stems from when I was very young. 
As one gets older, inevitably one becomes more analytical. I think about the formal aspects of painting. I love many paintings by abstract artists too, and of course I too have experimented in such a field. It is the infinite variety that I find in nature, in landscape for example, that protects me from repeating myself.
My method is to follow my instincts. For example, I become aware of a desire to make a painting based on a particular scene or place, and I hold that thought, and then act upon it. I feel it is important to listen out for that desire within myself, and  just get on and do the painting.
A family friend, an artist, once said to me about painting, and perhaps about life itself  ‘It is all a great mystery’. I often think of those words. I have no objection to being reasonably articulate about one's practice, and also be reasonably informed about what is going on, and I feel I will not disappoint anyone who seeks to analyse how I think. But a key point, it seems to me, about painting is that it is not words. My practice is about exploring the space that is mysterious.