| MISSION STATEMENT *To encourage others to practice "art filled living" *To restore hope to the blocked and struggling artists *To build confidence, courage, and dreams through art *To strengthen and energize existing artistic passions *To offer a form of "preventative medicine" through the formation of healthy passions *To provide a center for artists to congregate The jenniferharwellart staff welcomes your regular and frequent visits to the studio/gallery in SOHO SQUARE. Please let us add your name to our email list: Contact Us |
jenniferharwellart is a working studio/gallery in the heart of downtown Homewood in SOHO SQUARE. The Gallery & Website represent over
80 local, regional, and international artists. Please take time to click on the above links to view the art as well as a glimpse inside the Gallery
during the popular adult art classes.
80 local, regional, and international artists. Please take time to click on the above links to view the art as well as a glimpse inside the Gallery
during the popular adult art classes.
Links to some of our favorite sites: The Birmingham Museum of Art Westervelt Warner Museum of Art Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art High Museum of Art, Atlanta Art Galleries & Artists of the South |
Northwest Series
That stamp re-emerged in 2007 and 2008 in the 15-canvas Northwest Series, a collection of landscapes carved
rapidly in paint from a palette pared to burnt umber and raw umber, red and alizarin crimson, yellow ochre,
cobalt turquoise, and white. The paintings don't require a detailed understanding of the area to be appreciated,
but each bold line or hue from a Northwest scene will mean something to those reared there. The paintings of
the Columbia River, Larch, Shasta, Chehalem mountains, Bald Peak and two Portland nightscapes, among
others, were dry long before they were named after their geographical subjects, Harwell said.
Angels
As she painted the Northwest series, Harwell has continued to add new paintings to her Angel series, a cache of
now more than 100 abstracts depicting the elegance, spirituality, relationships and physicality of women. The
first, "Life Prevails," was the chance product of tearing - and then repainting -- a 60 x 48 inch color block
painting she found "meaningless" midway through the process. Since then, angels that "appear" on Harwell's
canvases can be elegant women, spiritual beings or even nudes, she says.
The two series represent the styles recognizable as Harwell's own, after four years of prodigious work in styles
and subjects that "appealed to everyone's tastes."
Rapid Fire
Harwell perhaps followed a typical path for artists. Showing skill at drawing and design as a teenager, she
instead chose a practical, academic career, nursing, until time allowed to develop her talents in later adulthood.
Harwell didn't begin painting on canvas until 2005, at age 49, and in six months had sold 35 of 100 paintings at
her first solo show. That same year she moved from her home studio into a 400-square-foot shopfront in
Homewood, Alabama, a work space she intended to use to sell some of the nearly 300 canvases previously
executed. By summer 2007, the Birmingham painter -- whose rapid-fire arm stroke produced 100 abstracts of
angels and a case of tennis elbow -- opened Jenniferharwellart.
The Gallery
There, Harwell has launched a marketing plan generous to new artists but in an authentic, (if self-consciously
chic) enclave of shops and cafes called SoHo Square in Birmingham's Homewood community.
> Generous, because Harwell rejected the conventional 50-50 commission and exclusive contracts for a 75-25
plan made feasible by charging low monthly marketing fee.
Those classes eventually brought blocked military painter Kevin Webster to the gallery in 2007. Webster, an
Alabama painter whose meticulous military and combat paintings hang at the Pentagon and in private
collections of at least two U.S. Army generals, hadn’t painted in four years. Harwell helped Webster begin
painting again then discovered Webster’s connections to Early American Western artist Charles Russell, a
mentor of Webster’s artist grandfather, a Montanan. Webster, now painting civilian portraits and exploring
Western themes, is accompanying Harwell on a gallery tour of the west and southwest this year.
> Authentic, because living in a loft above the gallery is celebrated artist Raeford Liles, 85, a native Alabamian
who returned to Birmingham after a career in Paris and Manhattan. Liles had made his mark in a series of ballet
movement paintings rendered during his years working at the new York City Ballet in the 1970's.
Some dozen of the remnant of Lile's dance movement painting – executed on massive canvases with negative
stencil, spray paint and acrylics – are hanging in Harwell’s gallery. Another dozen have been sold, with the
gallery working on plans for stashes of canvases still are rolled up in the SoHo loft.
Today, Harwell sums up her approach to art:
"My painting career was the next step in a succession of experiences that began as . Once I began painting, I
modeled freely on master painters, from Cezanne to Mark Rothko, and George Bellows, John Sargent, Gary
Earnest Smith by copying and abstracting their work before defining my own style. The heavily textured
surfaces come from my work in textiles and design work with objects that preceded painting.
"In landscapes, I work from top to bottom in defined, successive blocks of color. My composition is
straightforward -- a canvas divided in three parts and laying down paint from top to bottom as rapidly as
possible, splicing and sculpting shapes into the paint with the palette knife. Each surface is heavily textured, with
surprising juxtapositions of color. I believe composition, perspective and color balance are instinctive, and
unplanned."
Artists who most influenced my approach are Southwest painter Angus McPherson and Alabama Artist Roger
Brown. I've adopted the mantra of Brown, who was admonished by mentor Ray Yoshida at the School of the
Art Institute in Chicago to paint "only what he knew." For me, that knowing is only available when I start to
paint, and then I go into that place and paint vigorously. I do not require of my students or myself to sketch
what I’m going to paint beforehand. I paint from the hip."
That stamp re-emerged in 2007 and 2008 in the 15-canvas Northwest Series, a collection of landscapes carved
rapidly in paint from a palette pared to burnt umber and raw umber, red and alizarin crimson, yellow ochre,
cobalt turquoise, and white. The paintings don't require a detailed understanding of the area to be appreciated,
but each bold line or hue from a Northwest scene will mean something to those reared there. The paintings of
the Columbia River, Larch, Shasta, Chehalem mountains, Bald Peak and two Portland nightscapes, among
others, were dry long before they were named after their geographical subjects, Harwell said.
Angels
As she painted the Northwest series, Harwell has continued to add new paintings to her Angel series, a cache of
now more than 100 abstracts depicting the elegance, spirituality, relationships and physicality of women. The
first, "Life Prevails," was the chance product of tearing - and then repainting -- a 60 x 48 inch color block
painting she found "meaningless" midway through the process. Since then, angels that "appear" on Harwell's
canvases can be elegant women, spiritual beings or even nudes, she says.
The two series represent the styles recognizable as Harwell's own, after four years of prodigious work in styles
and subjects that "appealed to everyone's tastes."
Rapid Fire
Harwell perhaps followed a typical path for artists. Showing skill at drawing and design as a teenager, she
instead chose a practical, academic career, nursing, until time allowed to develop her talents in later adulthood.
Harwell didn't begin painting on canvas until 2005, at age 49, and in six months had sold 35 of 100 paintings at
her first solo show. That same year she moved from her home studio into a 400-square-foot shopfront in
Homewood, Alabama, a work space she intended to use to sell some of the nearly 300 canvases previously
executed. By summer 2007, the Birmingham painter -- whose rapid-fire arm stroke produced 100 abstracts of
angels and a case of tennis elbow -- opened Jenniferharwellart.
The Gallery
There, Harwell has launched a marketing plan generous to new artists but in an authentic, (if self-consciously
chic) enclave of shops and cafes called SoHo Square in Birmingham's Homewood community.
> Generous, because Harwell rejected the conventional 50-50 commission and exclusive contracts for a 75-25
plan made feasible by charging low monthly marketing fee.
Those classes eventually brought blocked military painter Kevin Webster to the gallery in 2007. Webster, an
Alabama painter whose meticulous military and combat paintings hang at the Pentagon and in private
collections of at least two U.S. Army generals, hadn’t painted in four years. Harwell helped Webster begin
painting again then discovered Webster’s connections to Early American Western artist Charles Russell, a
mentor of Webster’s artist grandfather, a Montanan. Webster, now painting civilian portraits and exploring
Western themes, is accompanying Harwell on a gallery tour of the west and southwest this year.
> Authentic, because living in a loft above the gallery is celebrated artist Raeford Liles, 85, a native Alabamian
who returned to Birmingham after a career in Paris and Manhattan. Liles had made his mark in a series of ballet
movement paintings rendered during his years working at the new York City Ballet in the 1970's.
Some dozen of the remnant of Lile's dance movement painting – executed on massive canvases with negative
stencil, spray paint and acrylics – are hanging in Harwell’s gallery. Another dozen have been sold, with the
gallery working on plans for stashes of canvases still are rolled up in the SoHo loft.
Today, Harwell sums up her approach to art:
"My painting career was the next step in a succession of experiences that began as . Once I began painting, I
modeled freely on master painters, from Cezanne to Mark Rothko, and George Bellows, John Sargent, Gary
Earnest Smith by copying and abstracting their work before defining my own style. The heavily textured
surfaces come from my work in textiles and design work with objects that preceded painting.
"In landscapes, I work from top to bottom in defined, successive blocks of color. My composition is
straightforward -- a canvas divided in three parts and laying down paint from top to bottom as rapidly as
possible, splicing and sculpting shapes into the paint with the palette knife. Each surface is heavily textured, with
surprising juxtapositions of color. I believe composition, perspective and color balance are instinctive, and
unplanned."
Artists who most influenced my approach are Southwest painter Angus McPherson and Alabama Artist Roger
Brown. I've adopted the mantra of Brown, who was admonished by mentor Ray Yoshida at the School of the
Art Institute in Chicago to paint "only what he knew." For me, that knowing is only available when I start to
paint, and then I go into that place and paint vigorously. I do not require of my students or myself to sketch
what I’m going to paint beforehand. I paint from the hip."
About Jennifer Harwell
| All rights reserved. |
| jennifer harwell art studio/gallery 1830 29th Ave S Suite 130 | SOHO Square | Homewood | AL | 35209 1901 6th Ave N Suite 175 | Regions Harbert Plaza | Birmingham | AL | 35203 |
Oregon-raised Jennifer Harwell, a self-taught painter, emerged on an
unlikely art scene in Birmingham, Alabama in 2006, at age 49, after
shunning an academic art education or following the path of her artist
brother, sculptor Steven Eichenberger (studiotenxiii.com) to become a
nurse.
An Iowan, Harwell moved to Newberg, Ore., with her family when she was
eight. She reserved for her later career impressions of a picture-book
1960s upbringing by a family of artisans -- her father, a printer and her
grandmother, a dress designer -- against a spectacular landscape that was
to become Oregon wine country.
"Those impressions, as I rode endlessly on my bike as a child, or played
with fabric from my grandmother's scrap box, left a grand life stamp,"
Harwell said.
unlikely art scene in Birmingham, Alabama in 2006, at age 49, after
shunning an academic art education or following the path of her artist
brother, sculptor Steven Eichenberger (studiotenxiii.com) to become a
nurse.
An Iowan, Harwell moved to Newberg, Ore., with her family when she was
eight. She reserved for her later career impressions of a picture-book
1960s upbringing by a family of artisans -- her father, a printer and her
grandmother, a dress designer -- against a spectacular landscape that was
to become Oregon wine country.
"Those impressions, as I rode endlessly on my bike as a child, or played
with fabric from my grandmother's scrap box, left a grand life stamp,"
Harwell said.
 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
