UK in NY at Nancy Hoffman Gallery

October 10-31, 2001

Nancy Hoffman Gallery is participating in the British Council's Festival entitled "UK in NY" by presenting works of two English artists--Rohan Harris and Lucy Mackenzie--in its Projects Space from October 10th to 31st.

Both artists work in small scale: Lucy Mackenzie, a painter, creates oils and drawings, works of intimate scale, capturing objects in her environment, surrounding them with an atmosphere of peace; Rohan Harris, sculptor, painter, creates wall sculptures of wax, cloth, wire and bits of metal in earth tones of rich greens and umbers.

Mackenzie's paintings and drawings are mesmerizing, contemplative objects that draw the viewer into a serene and private world. Her subjects range from still life to portraits to images from nature. To achieve this sense of quiet and timelessness, Mackenzie may spend up to several months working on a painting and several weeks working on her colored pencil drawings. The seeming simplicity of the paintings is deceptive, achieved as the artist says, "through the rigorous control of color and form, with many layers of tiny brush strokes."

Mackenzie's still lifes and portraits are of simple distilled objects against a singular color background--sometimes a bright color, marigold yellow, at others a neutral color, beige or black. They have an ambiance of purity with motifs that recur, memories of the artist. Clusters of shells refer to her love of the beach from growing up in the Isles of Scilly; flowers in a vase reveal her love of the English garden and the beauty it yields in its flowering; beloved objects in her house are perfumed with personal history as well as affection for the humble universals we surround ourselves with that constitute a life--an old toy clown of miniature scale stands on two antique boxes, small wooden bowls sit on a shelf, perfect geometric objects, regal in their bearing; a classic white tea cup on a saucer symbolizes a ritual moment. The ordinary becomes extra-ordinary in Mackenzie's depiction of everyday objects, drawn to perfection, raised to objects of silent contemplation.

Mackenzie's portraits are of people she knows, austere in their being and presentation, not unlike Italian Renaissance portraits or the Tudor heads of kings and queens, set against plain monochromatic backgrounds.

Lucy Mackenzie was born in Sudan, Africa in 1952 and moved to Isles of Scilly, England as a young child. She received a B.A. from Bristol Polytechnic; an M.A. from the Royal College of Art, London where she received the Princess of Wales Scholarship. The artist was awarded a fellowship at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design, Cheltenham. She was commissioned by Lord Esher, Rector of Royal College of Art, for H.M. The Queen, for a Silver Jubilee gift from the college.

Mackenzie's work has been shown in public venues abroad at the Royal College of Art, 150th Anniversary Painting Exhibition, London; Museo Municipal, Madrid; the Welsh Arts Council Touring Exhibition; and in this country at the Fine Arts Center Galleries, University of Rhode Island, Kingston.

Rohan Harris creates iconic images in wood, which he wraps in fabric, enframes in metal, and then layers beeswax on the surface in rich earthy tones. Harris's personal and idiosyncratic shapes become vehicles for the artist to wield his magic, painterly surfaces without the use of paint, thoughtfully and meticulously applying layer upon layer of wax.

Growing up in England, surrounded by the saturated colors of country landscape, Harris's works pay homage in abstraction to the colors and range of light of English naturescapes in the umbers of fall, the velvet greens of spring and the pure white frosts of winter. The shapes of the pieces function like windows into a personal vista, a haiku in beeswax, metal, fabric and wood. Quirky unto themselves, the materials gain grace in this artist's hands.

Rigorously demanding of his shapes and surfaces, Harris creates some pieces that protrude from the wall several inches, reaching out into space like a growing branch or blossom. His newest pieces focus on the circle enframed, floating an inch off the wall. Elusive spheres suggest the verdancy of nature in its fullness or the bark of a tree in autumn, contemplative floating discs, objects of quiet meditation.

Rohan Harris was born in Amersham, England in 1963. He received his degrees in painting from the Chelsea School of Art in England. Harris's work has been exhibited in London and New York.