For me, it is not about reproducing the visible,
​​​​but rather making it visible.
Hello, I’m Harry (Harriet) Millar.

I grew up between and played upon the ledges and edges of two tidal estuaries, the Dee and the Mersey, in the Wirral (Myrtle Corner). Salt marshes and mud flats, dropping down and away into sky-rippled water. Shapeshifting and fascinating. Unseen by me, these were potentially treacherous playgrounds, replete with shifting banks and channels, and tidal currents, and polluted by industrial discharges and adjacent sea dumping. 

My youthful, uninformed observations of, and desire for an understanding of naturallandfalls and forms deepened over the years, broadened by tertiary education at Wirral Metropolitan College, Foundation Art (1987), Derby University, Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Arts in Healing and Learning (1991), Liverpool University, Post-Graduate Diploma in Psychology of Sports Science (1999), and resulting in the pursuit of painting.

Immigration and marriage, major life changes, brought me to Aotearoa and, specifically, to Waitaha (Canterbury), my husband’s roots, Kā Pākihi Whakatekateka A Waitaha (‘the seed bed of the Waitaha people’). I found out that immigrationinvolves more than a shift in geography, and, like marriage, can entail alterations as well as the creation of different and deep relations – almost a new way of being.

Aotearoa, a landfall apart, yet connected.
I found these islands riveting. The product of uplift, of braided rivers that surge and deposit sediments eroded from upland ranges to create varied and alluvial coastlines. Dynamic and mesmeric. Is it any wonder I paint these landforms over and over? As Georgia O’Keeffe has told us, “To see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” And she was/is right!

Firmly routed in these islands, I am indivisibly a working mother and artist. My everyday responsibilities (five children and finances) have, paradoxically, served both to constrain and as a spur to my passion  ̶  painting. And now that I have successfully outsourced my five children to school and tertiary education, I want to further my practice and engagement with painting. Why? Because it is my passion. And because I believe that the layeredmark-making – from the caves of Lascaux above the Vézère River valley near Montignac, in Dordogne, France, to Te Ana o Hineraki, Moa Bone Point Cave. Basalt Magma fragment, in Sumner, can help us to see and better negotiate the‘rocky road’, the dying leaf or petal, the inevitable changes in time and energy that form and shape-shift our work-a-day world, what we call reality.  

​A bit of a leap? A bit exaggerated? No, because reality is neither singular, nor stable. And, across human time, the mark-making of others have celebrated thisplurality. Reality is a constant round of changes. Differences and layers abound.

Around And In Us
Painting has taught me to see and understand the changes manifest in nature, and in human expressions. The geological processes and the membrane of human tenancies overlaying these; the changes in the planes of a face. Painting has also taught me that to see and share these explorations requires not only rigorous research, but also acute powers of critical observation and imagination.  

​Making change visible is not reproducing it. That’s why my paintings are contemplations on, not descriptions of change. Some perceptible. Like the excoriation on a landform, the drying of a petal, a frown surfacing on a brow. Others are nestled or nascent. I think my works are more palimpsests than signposts. (Love that word, palimpsests – all about use and recycling! The layers, the stacking strata of land and clouds, the folds of skin over bone structure). 

​For years my kitchen has functioned as my workspace. Yet any such constraints have proved positive. Throughout the growing years of my children, I have gleaned access to sight and expression (innocence) unconditioned by experience or rumination. The mark-making of children, like their communication, is spontaneous. For them, as Paul Klee understood, it is not about reproducing the visible, but rather making it visible.  

​Towards this pre-conditioned or unfettered way of making things visible andtrying to understand how our eyes and brain work together to extrapolate and translate light into colour, I’ve developed a process that I call ‘Radiant Light’. This involves three stages, beginning with a non-prescriptive and unanticipated paint application. For instance, a face, or a shoreline, might be laid down initially in acrylic yellows and pinks and subsequently over-blocked in dark value local colour which, in turn and in oil, are then tuned to the compositional interactions of colour forms. These varied applications enable the full spectrum of light to shine through the applied layered colours. The process uses chromatic layers to evoke the changes in the spectral quality of light, helping us see the transitions, past and ongoing,manifest around us. I love sharing this process and running workshops. They may start with ‘surprise’, even doubts, but are inevitably rewarding. 

COLOUR

Colour, typically defined as a property of visible light and determined by the wavelength of the light, has the capacity to soothe, excite, challenge, and intensify. But light, the primary source for all existence, is the medium that enables this spectrum of emotional and intellectual engagement.

Science tells us that the visual cortex sends colour information to other parts of the brain enabling us to process what we are seeing. But what painting has taught me is that the actual perception of colour is completely subjective, that there is no fixed or finite way to see or be, that art is an open and subjective space, replete with instability, incoherence and doubt. To see takes time.

To understand how our eyes and brain work together to extrapolate and translate light into colour, I have developed a painterly process which I call Radiant Light. This involves three stages of paint application, the overlay of which enables the full spectrum of light to shine through the applied colours.

​The first stage involves thick layers of acrylic underpainting in loose brushstrokes blocking the forms of a composition in light value, non-local and instinctive colour, rather than actual or analytical-mimetic colour.
​The second stage, still in acrylics, uses dark value local colour to over-block the primary marks, but leaving happenstance gaps that allow the contrasting luminous light value underpainting colours to glance through (bright under ‘light’ fine-tuning) evoking suggestions of change, movement, chance and dimensions.
​At the third stage, using oil, close attention is paid to value interactions and contrasts amongst contiguous colours and tones, and how these combine to form, or intensify, shapes, especially when in direct contact. For example, how a cast shadow relates to the object instigating the shadow. 

In my practice, and in those of my students, these three strategic stages merge to produce works that are dimensional yet fluid, well-suited to the thematic concerns – making visible and understandingthe evidential changes manifest in nature and the membrane of human tenancies overlaying these.

 SUPPORT
Galleries play an enormous role in supporting artists. I am fortunate in my gallery associations and grateful for the professional way in which they promote my work and help foster a community of viewers.

Solo Shows

“Southern Light”, Little River Gallery, Canterbury 2024

“Slice of Life”, Turua Gallery, Auckland 2023

“Summer Show”, Little River Gallery, Canterbury 2023

“Southern Charm”, The Artists Room Gallery, Dunedin 2022

Group / Joint Shows

“Tiny Show” Turua Gallery2024

“Summer Series”, Gallery 33, Wanaka 2024

“Wish List”, Little River Gallery, Canterbury 2023

“Tiny Show”, Turua Gallery, Auckland 2023

“Flower Show” Little River Gallery, Canterbury 2023

“Summer Series”, Gallery 33, Wanaka 2023

“Still”, Red Gallery, Nelson 2023

“Sprout”, Gallery 33, Wanaka 2022

“Joy”, Turua Gallery, Auckland 2021

“Neighbourhood Show”, Turua Gallery, Auckland 2021

“The Flower Show”, Little River Gallery, Canterbury 2021

“Chroma”, The Artists Room Gallery, Dunedin 2021

“Bloom”, Turua Gallery, Auckland 2020

“Canterbury Tales, Christchurch, StudioHome 2019

Reviews:
Verve Magazine 2023; Latitude Magazine 2020; ODT Art Scene 2022; 2023.