nik harron » rebirth

Open.

artnik — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 04:57:20 +0000

Painted for the The Brush Off at THE MUSEUM.

Painted in the first round— the OPEN round where I was free to paint whatever I wanted.

“Open”
18×18 in
Acrylic on canvas
2012

Photograph by Joe Martz

This painting is in the private collection of Carol Moogk-Soulis.

Swell.

artnik — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 04:54:10 +0000

Painted for the The Brush Off at THE MUSEUM.

Painted in the final round— the SPEAK round where each of the three finalists interpreted the word “swell”

“Swell”
18×18 in
Acrylic on canvas
2012

Photograph by Joe Martz

This painting is in the private collection of Carol Moogk-Soulis.

On Earth, as it is…

artnik — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 20:29:23 +0000

Reflecting the direct physical connection between our world and the sky in which it spins, the pattern on Earth is the same as it is in the heavens.

“On Earth, as it is…”
Acrylic on panel
24×48 in
2012

This painting is available for purchase.

Winter field

artnik — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:01:27 +0000

In early spring, the snow begins to clear from the field revealing the soil below.

“Winter field”
Acrylic on panel
12 in x 12 in
2011

This painting is in the private collection of Mark Anderson

Our Earth is not a cold, dead place

artnik — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:42:25 +0000

An exploration of our shared cosmological sense of place— the fixed point of the cold, north star anchors the motion of our continued journey as our life continues below.

“Our Earth is not a cold, dead place”
Acrylic on panel
24 in x 48 in
2011

This painting is available for purchase.

Gathering Autumn

artnik — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:32:41 +0000

The ever-changing panorama of Southwestern Ontario’s meadow foliage is dramatically punctuated by the light of heavy weather gathering for the fall.

“Gathering Autumn”
Acrylic on panel
30 in x 30 in

This painting is available for purchase.

Field, full of promise

artnik — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:31:04 +0000

Up early in the country, on a bright spring morning, watching the sunrise over the field ready for planting.

24x24in
acrylic on panel
2011

Private collection of Carol Moogk-Soulis.

The field remembers the rain

artnik — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:37:12 +0000

A southwestern Ontario field, ploughed, dry and cracked waits in the early spring for the rain to come.

24x24in
Acrylic on panel
2011

Private collection of Lynn Schmidt

Ploughed field after rain

artnik — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 22:23:47 +0000

Driving along the backroads of Southwestern Ontario in the wet, stormy days of early spring the ploughed fields wait for the green to burst from the ground and renew the landscape.

24x24in
acrylic on canvas
2010

Private collection of Roxanne McClenaghan

Trinity

artnik — Sun, 07 Jan 2001 00:02:56 +0000

This painting is one of the original 4 landscapes that moved me from narrative works and urban network themes to confronting the individual relationship to nature as a way of exploring the fertile landscapes of internal, spiritual experience. Of the four original landscapes, this painting shares the greatest amount of focus on urban, technological themes with any painting that came before it.

I like to ask people what they think the landscape depicts, and unfortunately, this is not a painting of a sunset or sunrise. The painting is actually an abstract representation of the first moments of the world’s first atomic bomb explosion – the Trinity test. The text carved into the painting, from left to right, explores the irony inherent in the fact that, mathematically speaking, models of the large-scale “texture” in the universe’s big-bang afterglow are good analogues of the math describing the first moments of the detonation of an atomic bomb. In a singularly 20th century acension day, that initial devastating creative act of “let there be light” awkwardly echoing Oppenheimer’s famous borrowing from the Bhagavad Gita: ”If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one… Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

It is a bleak, artificial landscape.

The other 3 paintings moved from this view of our destructive relationship with nature towards a deeper examination of the various ways that we relate to nature. The second painting was a depiction of a similar fiery destruction that is part of the natural order (i.e. forest fires).

The third painting in the exhibition was a representation of the deeply individual experience of lying back in tall, fragrant grass on the edge of sleep at sunset on a warm summer’s evening- a direct, individual experience of nature.

The fourth painting examined the abstract quantum duality at the heart of our understanding of reality which is a completely mental relationship with nature – both a benign opposite to where we started, whilst also being ironically full circle inasmuch as it is representative of the same science that gave us the atom bomb in the first place.

The text and linear grooves carved into the surface of the fourth painting examined the paradox that light can be described and observed as a particle under some circumstances and as a wave in others. Existing in different states was represented metaphorically as a Lake Huron landscape in which ice masses on the horizon towards the end of the melt while open water lies between it and the viewer onshore who looks out towards the ice.

After these four paintings carved narrative text has all but disappeared from my landscape work.

trinity

2001
acrylic on canvas
36x108in
collection of Janet McLeod