Billis/Williams Gallery is pleased to present Kenny Harris: Venice, the gallery’s first solo exhibition of paintings by the Los Angeles-based painter. Harris is well known for painting based on locations around the globe but in this new series, he turns his brush to a more personal subject – his home. The exhibition opens on March 28th with an opening reception and continues through May 2nd.
Kenny Harris is noted for his self-directed-residency-based oil paintings. Harris’ paintings are about place – but most often from the vantage of a visitor. He travels to locations around the globe and spends weeks immersed in these spaces – studying the light, the landscape, the architecture. The body of work begins as studies and small paintings on site and grows into a full series upon return to the studio.
This new body of work brings Harris’ process home – literally. The Venice series is about a place Harris knows well: Venice, CA – his home for the last 25 years. Instead of through the eye of a visitor, these pantings are from the perspective of decades spent in and around these spaces. The paintings are about a place but also about the artist – revisiting locales and vistas that have been part of his daily life for decades.
The painting range in scale from intimate to the monumental 72×48 inches. They are not the clichéd views of Venice – these are the views of someone deeply connected to these spaces – the beach at dawn, the pier fading into the fog, neon-lit arches of a walkway. The palette is the soft warm gray of fog over the Venice Pier, the brilliant blue of neon, the orange of the sky over the Pacific at that one time of day.
Harris is reflecting on how time has shaped both the place and himself. Venice has evolved, grown, and changed: landmarks have disappeared, the views of Malibu are forever altered, new buildings are rising next to 100 year old homes. This series is about simultaneously holding the memory of the past and the hope for the future: the bittersweet recollections of what has gone and the fascination and appreciation for what is the come. Much as life is about balancing grief and joy in the midst of the mundane, these paintings speak to where the artist is – the awe that comes with recognizing the passage of time and the beauty and peace that is found in finding the beauty that is and has been right in front of us.
Kenny Harris (b. 1974, Palo Alto, CA) received his B.A. from Colorado College and his M.F.A in Painting from Laguna College of Art + design. During his undergraduate junior year abroad, he studied in Florence, immersing himself in the history of Renaissance art and in classical figure drawing in the atelier of Charles Cecil. Harris went on to live in San Francisco and then New York City, where he studied under Frank Mason at the Art Students League. In 2001, he settled in Venice Beach, CA, and that became his home base for extensive travels that took him to Ireland, Italy, Cuba, France, China, and Istanbul. His work has been included in exhibitions internationally and has appeared in Whitehot Magazine, ArtWeek LA, American Art Collector, Fine Art Connoisseur, Artist’s Magazine, Angeleno Magazine, Milieu Magazine, and Epoch Times among others. He was the 2015-2017 recipient of an Albert K. Murray Grant and the 2016 recipient of an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and has received artist residencies in France and Italy. He lives and works in Venice, CA, with his wife, painter Judy Nimtz.
