Paintings in watercolour and gouache by

Harry Anderson

This will be the first exhibition of the work of Harry Anderson for over forty years. The exhibition commences on 17th August which would have been his 83rd birthday. He died in 2002, leaving a studio full of over 200 watercolours and guaches, plus oil paintings and over 1,000 archive drawings and notes. The work has now been seen by other artists of standing who agree that it is significant, showing considerable drawing skills and an intellectual grasp of painting. It displays a steady progression from the fifties until he died and is not easy to catagorise.

Harry Anderson was born in 1923 and was brought up in Fife, Scotland, where he lived until beginning his study of art at Edinburgh College of Art in 1950. In the mid fifties he moved to London, a mecca for artists, and lived in Soho, latterly above the gallery of the Artists International Association. In 1960 he moved to Harlow. He lived and occupied a studio at Parndon Mill for the last thirty years of his life.

FROM THE STUDIO NEXT DOOR

An appraisal of the work of Harry Anderson by fellow artist
CHRIS ROSKELL

After Harry's death four years ago, when his studio was cleared to make way for a new occupant, it came as a surprise even to some of us who knew him well to see the extent of the body of work that he left. This ranged from the most seemingly insignificant source drawings, often no more than a few marks on a scrap of paper, whatever was in his pocket at the time, to fully worked oil paintings. It is a rare occurrence to see the body of an artist's work in this way. Almost his mature life's work in one place, virtually all there, from initial idea to resolved work.

Harry did not often show his work and although some people were able over the years to buy the odd piece, his paintings, on completion seemed to gradually recede into the recesses of his studio not to be seen again until now. This seems to show that his preoccupation was with the making of the work, and on completing it he moved on.

There were not many days when Harry did not spend some hours in his studio. He did not often leave the grounds of Parndon Mill, some of his time spent helping to look after the livestock or doing odd jobs around the site, the rest at his work in the privacy of his space on the top floor. This apparently rather insular life style might restrict some artists, but in Harry's case it did not seem to. The source of his work was almost invariably something observed as he went about his daily routine, a certain tree form, a gaggle of geese making their way down to the water, or maybe the mill pond with rain falling onto the surface. These observations, sometimes with written notes on scraps of paper made at the time, put by to be considered and worked over later.

Harry came from a background of formal art education which has largely passed now. Edinburg College of Art, in those days under the tutelage of William Gillies, focused on the traditional disciplines of the painter, principally the importance of formal drawing. One of Harry's influential tutors was Charles Pulsford, who I know from personal experience considered drawing to be of paramount importance, and was a superb classical draughtsman himself. Although Harry's work at the time was starting to move towards the very painterly style that he continued to develop throughout his working life, it seems clear to me that drawing and the consideration of form within the painted rectangle was what principally underpinned the work. Consideration of colour was clearly important to him, but like a number of his Scottish contemporaries, not of primary concern. This seems to emerge from the possibility of seeing the work as a body and having been able to see him at work.

To visit Harrys studio, which in latter years I often did, my own studio being next door, would normaly find him sitting with a cigarette and a cup of coffee in deep contemplation of the piece that he was working on. While the finished work might appear to consist of loose, often gestural and expressive marks, these were all intensely considered. There were no accidents. Each mark, while it may have been achieved in a loose way, was deeply thought through, often changed, painted out or moved. But precise. A piece of work in this way would progress until it was resolved, sometimes taking many weeks. Occasionally, as can be seen in what he left, a piece of unresolved work may have been abandoned. This seems to have been a result maybe of the painted surface becoming overworked or of Harry finding himself up a blind alley as it were, where he could find no way to proceed, in which case we can normally find a further work where eventually the idea was resolved.

Coming from a highly sophisticated art education Harry would have been well aware of what was going on in the art world of the nineteen fifties. The work of the American Abstract Expressionists clearly appealed to him, opening up a new way of looking at the whole activity of painting, but also British and Continental painters were developing in a slightly different way, a new way of making work. What I think differentiates Harry's work, with its superficial resemblance to painters like Jackson Pollock, is its obvious root in figuration. All the work without exception comes from an observed formal source. His work while being about the process of painting was always rooted in something that he had seen and drawn.

In choosing the work for this exhibition the space in the gallery has restricted both the amount and the kind of work it is possible to show. We have, therefore, selected works on paper from a wide chronological period. However the visitor to the exhibition can see supplementary work, i.e. drawings and sketches which we hope will illustrate to some extent the way in which Harry arrived at some of the beautiful works that we are privileged to be able to enjoy here.

In many ways this is "difficult" work, not always easily read. It is often suggested that this kind of very abstract painting is something that "anybody could do". This is most certainly not the case. This leads me to pose a thought for the visitor to this exhibition who might undervalue the work. A man educated to the highest level in his subject, who then spends the rest of his life working away, following a clear route, without deviating, towards some sort of resolution of a problem he has set himself, probably knows what he is doing. It is up to us to try to see it.