Jennifer Harding
'Seer'

Acrylic on canvas
81 x 71 cm

Jennifer Harding was born in Fordingbridge in 1956. She studied at Salisbury College of Art 1974-75, Canterbury College of Art 1975-78, and Cyprus College of Art, Paphos, Cyprus 1979. After a scholarship at Athens School of Fine Arts 1983-84 she returned to Cyprus College of Art as Visiting Artist regularly during the 1980s and has done so annually since 1991. Her most recent one-person show was held at the Hellenic Centre, London 2000.

"In the Paphos Museum in Cyprus is a marble eye of Roman origin, whose smooth, elliptical shape recurs in a series of my paintings, including this one. Whilst not usually over-painted, they are the result of much deliberation and many pages of small drawings. The illusionism of geometrical floor mosaics in Kato Paphos has intrigued me, and spatial ambiguity has become more evident in my recent work – some of it occasional small landscape paintings.

Nikos Kazantzakis, in 'The Life and Times of Alexi Zorba', likens landscape to good writing in a way that I would apply equally to good painting: 'This Cretan landscape seemed to me like good prose: a few well chosen words, free of unnecessary richness, strong and restrained. It makes the point with the simplest means. It doesn't fool about, it doesn't resort to trickery, it doesn't harangue. It says what it has to say with austerity. But amongst its austere lines, you can discern unexpected sensitivity and gentleness.'"