artist BIO:

Jennifer Leigh Harrison is a multidisciplinary artist, psychotherapist, and social worker based in Seattle. As a self-taught painter, Harrison has shown at Van Der Plas Gallery in NYC and has been jury selected for international exhibits with honorable mention. She was awarded the annual first place prize for abstract art at Gage in 2023. Her art focuses on themes of movement and deconstruction in lyrical abstract form that struggle with themes of power and acceptance in an embodied practice that has been described as performative. Harrison's visually organic work is distinguished by improvised layers of stripped surfaces and mark making that house texture, color, both hidden and revealed. Her art is currently on display at various locations in Seattle.

A recipient of the Marian Coe Scholarship award for creative writing, Harrison’s work is internationally published in journals and anthologies. She is the author of the chapbook, Places We Left, published by Dancing Girl Press.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I believe in the ability of art to challenge oppressive structure -- setting new ground, scraping and peeling back to reveal or to maintain what is buried or covered underneath and to create something transformative within those constraints. This becomes a commentary on social change as well as environmental change. In our time of political and environmental catastrophe, my work parallels a discussion between the destruction, healing and treatment of body and land. 

Thriving, surviving and/or failure to do so are common undercurrents, as well as the fluidity of time and space.  These are all themes primary in my profession as a psychotherapist and social worker, and difficult or limiting to convey as a poet, but freeing to explore in visual form. 

I work intuitively and without set intention, using movement as a primary method in the image. Each piece becomes clear to me as I am on the floor with it, in all its phases. I use my whole physical exertion which allows my paintings to be embodied intuitive states of the human condition.

I presently achieve this with acrylic paint and associated mediums, sometimes incorporating charcoal, ink, oil and wax. I manipulate materials with steel, cloth, knives, hard plastics, wood, and physical force -- rarely using traditional tools like paintbrushes. As a performance artist, I strive to create conceptual experiences that encourage new ways of thinking about social problems we face as an invitation for change.