Jeffrey Harris
Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1949
My Dream of the North Island
- 1978
- Etching
- Purchased, 1991
- 278 x 379mm
- 91/61
Tags: animals, birds (animals), boats, crosses (visual works), flags, hearts (motifs), monochrome, people (agents), saws, seas, swings, swords
Jeffrey was a prolific printmaker throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Encouraged by Joanna Margaret Paul, he made his first etching while attending evening classes at Dunedin’s Otago Polytechnic School of Art in 1971. During 1977–78 Jeffrey made a large body of etchings whilst staying in Mount Pisa, Central Otago with his friend and fellow artist Grahame Sydney, himself an accomplished printmaker. Jeffrey obviously relished the opportunity to use Grahame’s etching press and made good use of dental tools for precise mark making on the waxed surface of the plates.
(Jeffrey Harris: The Gift, 1 October 2022 – 12 March 2023)
Exhibition History
Painters as Printmakers, 19 October 2007 - 20 January 2008
Throughout the 1970s, Jeffery Harris successfully called on his technical skill and abilities in drawing highly detailed, complex images which emphasised line rather than tone to produce an outstanding body of etchings. Here, Harris readily replaced the sharpened pencil lead with the keenly honed etching needle to achieve similar finely detailed lines. Works such as My Dream of the North Island highlight Harris’ interest in psychological, dreamlike subject matter.
Harris is largely self-taught as an artist, and although better known for his paintings he is also a highly regarded printmaker. Harris first worked with etchings in 1971, when he briefly studied under the printmaker Walden Tucker at the Otago Polytechnic School of Art . Since then he has printed many of his own etchings and also worked in collaboration with printmaker John Loane at the Viridian Press in Melbourne.