“We are acutely attuned to the differences between people, especially the sexes, but the differences are nothing like so interesting and useful as the similarities. We are driven by this contradiction. Looking at other people is a way of looking at yourself. The other aspect to this, of course, is the curious relationship between men and women, locked in a perpetual dance of intelligence and need.”
-Harry Holland
Harry, can you tell me more about your upbringing in Glasgow and how your environment in Scotland impacted your art?
I was born in Glasgow and spent some of my early life there, but my Scottish father was killed early in the War, and my London-born mother took up (after a decent interval, I hope) with another man and we spent most of my childhood following him about. He was a chef who could not hold down a job for more than a season so we lived in various parts of the UK eventually settling on the outskirts of London when I was twelve. Who knows how I would have turned out if things had been more settled. What I remember about Glasgow, even as a youngster, is the religious hatred which still scars that city (my family were all Protestant Orangemen). It left me with a clear understanding that religion is a divisive and malign force.
What is the most profound thing that your time at St. Martin’s School of Art taught you? The second part of my question is do you feel that you would be the same artist now without the art education?
The best thing I learned at St Martin’s was that there is a structure and purpose to the various categories of drawing (form, line, tone, atmosphere,) and there are skills which can be learned and used to appreciate old art and make paintings which embody the best qualities of the tradition of painting. The other good thing I learned was that there is a lot of bullshit spoken in my world. I would have been much better off if I had been apprenticed to a good artist at the age of about fourteen.
I read in your bio that, “The paintings are suggestive in the sense that they imply situations, events, or relationships that are not directly expressed; this imbues them with an engaging sense of mystery.” Do you feel your work is suggestive and if so why do you engage such a sense of mystery in your art?
The narrative paintings I make are deliberately enigmatic. I like the idea of a number of things going on at once, nothing definite, nothing going anywhere, no one interpretation possible. It’s much more what life is like. The word mystery implies a spiritual dimension but it’s more to do with the strange realization that the person you are looking at is as complex and conflicted as you in all meaningful respects.
Oscar Wilde was quoted saying … “Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.” Your work seems to delve into the narrative between men and women quite often … Do you have any thoughts on this quote?
Like many of his aphorisms, it is specious. We are acutely attuned to the differences between people, especially the sexes, but the differences are nothing like so interesting and useful as the similarities. We are driven by this contradiction. Looking at other people is a way of looking at yourself. The other aspect to this, of course, is the curious relationship between men and women, locked in a perpetual dance of intelligence and need.
Can you talk more on the meaning behind your piece ‘Falling’?
I can’t talk very well about the meaning of individual paintings. I have internal stories for paintings as I am making them, but they are more likely to do with my feelings about another artist or a technical problem that interests me. The image itself I make to avoid any specific meaning. My reason for constructing a particular image is that it looks as though something is going on but I don’t know what. I’m more concerned (and often delighted ) with what the audience makes of the narrative. “Falling” is a capricious evocation of those nineteenth century Salon paintings which were moved aside by the Romantic and scientistic gyrations of twentieth century fashion.
Do you find that the location of your studio and your geographic surroundings has a lot to do with the way you create artistically?
Cardiff is a diverse and growing city with old and new areas and populations. Just walking down the street is enough to trigger off ideas and associations. But my main inspirations are interior – psychologically and physically – and old art.
The title of your piece ‘Chicken’ is very interesting, what is the significance of that title in conjunction with topic matter of the work?
As I say, I’m not very good at meanings. I read a story about strippers being sent to an oil rig to entertain the workmen and it mentioned chicken dinners. It seemed to me interesting to make a connection between what the guy was eating and what he was seeing.
When art historian Jean Leymarie was preparing to talk for a symposium on art and sexuality, he asked his friend Picasso where he drew the line between these two concepts. The painter replied, “They are the same thing, because art can only be erotic.” Harry, I am curious to know your thoughts on this because there seems to be a lot of eroticism in your work as well?
I think Picasso was stretching the word erotic beyond its useful boundary. He was talking, I expect, about the relationship between sensations and ideas. Strong visual facts stimulate associations and trains of thought which are exciting and suggestive. But they don’t have to be necessarily sexual in nature. You would have to be particularly obsessed with sex to get a rise out of, for example, Goya’s “Executions of the Third of May”. Having said that a majority of all the work done in all art forms is about sex – not surprising when you consider it’s what most men spend most of their time thinking about. I can’t speak for women. Most women of my acquaintance say they don’t. Erotic art can evoke sexual feeling for example by finding a visual equivalent for touch by slowing down the passage of your eyes over a form in the way a hand would stroke a body, or draw out the delicacy of fine cloth resting lightly on firm skin. A lot of my work is erotic, and some of it is about sexual relations, and some of it, like the still lives, has no sexual element at all. Sometimes they get a bit mixed up.
