MARY KENT HARRISON and the POETRY OF PLACE
MKH's subject matter was very often landscape. Landscape painting was important to her. She loved the beauty of the landscapes around her throughout her life. The intense beauty of the landscapes she saw was something she wished to communicate. Or, to put it another way, her experience of that beauty was intense. When one looks at a landscape painting by her, one is very definitely taken to the particular place depicted. Such paintings are not predominantly about her - they are about the actual places, and her experience of them. She has not sort to communicate her own ego in the making of these paintings. Thus what I call 'The Poetry Of Place' is revealed, and lives on as the viewer looks at the paintings. Ineveitably the paintings must be about her to some extent, but only as a by product. I feel she was humble before nature and quite overcome by it's beauty. It is as if it was a spiritual experience for her. The realization perhaps that it was Heaven on Earth that she was before her.
With a few exceptions, she painted places that were familiar to her throughout the journey of her life. London,(especially Richmond), Cambridge, the west coast of Scotland, Spain, and finally Lancashire and the Yorkshire Dales. Nearly always figures were included in the compositions, helping to communicate scale and humanity's relationship with the land. This relationship emphasized a harmony and happy coexistence, that is perhaps rather sadly not the whole story, but is more of an idealized, or hoped for relationship that often has a naive, pleasant and positive feel.
With a few exceptions, she painted places that were familiar to her throughout the journey of her life. London,(especially Richmond), Cambridge, the west coast of Scotland, Spain, and finally Lancashire and the Yorkshire Dales. Nearly always figures were included in the compositions, helping to communicate scale and humanity's relationship with the land. This relationship emphasized a harmony and happy coexistence, that is perhaps rather sadly not the whole story, but is more of an idealized, or hoped for relationship that often has a naive, pleasant and positive feel.