David Harrison

Painting, Collage, Sculpture, Writing & Film

David Harrison is an artist whose love of nature is the primary inspiration for his work. Living in the centre of London, where man claims every inch of space for himself, it's hard to imagine a parallel world hidden in its undergrowth where nature adapts as its habitat shrinks, but this invisible world is a cause of wonder which feeds his work.

Harrison has been driven by his love of art and the natural world throughout his life, being expelled from school at a very young age as he showed no interest in any subject beyond these. Growing up in the severely scarred landscape of post-war East London, his playground was row upon row of bombed and deserted houses. Every shape was to hand — table legs, mirrors, abandoned toys — all ready to be changed into whatever his imagination needed them to be. To find amongst this carnage, upon an old dressing table, a carefully woven blackbird's nest with new life in its cup, was to him an inspiration of beauty unsurpassed.

Harrison works with as many materials as possible to bring his work close to its original source. It is this love of many materials, especially those discarded as rubbish, which leads him to collage and three-dimensional objects, recycling ready-made shapes to give them a new lease of life. This has been a pre-occupation throughout his life.

After a period of 9-to-5 work in which he continued to sketch, draw and put together 3-d objects, Harrison studied for a BA in Fine Art Painting at St Martin's School of Art. It is here that he began painting with acrylics, enabling him to work in a fast and throw-away manner, expressed in the spontaneity of his collage and 3-d work. This was the mainstay of his artistic output for the next decade until he moved into oils during the early 1990’s. This was a whole new experience of painting for Harrison, who adopted a more thoughtful and methodical style, which continues in his most recent work, not only on canvas, but on any found object with an appropriate surface for painting.

David Harrison is represented by Victoria Miro.

 

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