Skidmore Contemporary Art presents “Tracey Sylvester Harris: The Swimming Pool.” An opening reception was held on Saturday July 10, 2021 with the artist. Be sure to contact the gallery, to view the exhibition through August 14, 2021…it’s a beautiful show!

Tracey Sylvester Harris, Soaring Diver, Oil on canvas, 40” x 40”  2021

Info from the gallery:
The timeless allure of the swimming pool is the inspiration for TSH exhibition of new paintings. The subjects of the paintings all play, dive, lounge and enjoy themselves in or around the calm and waiting presence of the swimming pool.

Harris dates her fascination with the subject of water, to a childhood in a hot climate, where most of her summers were spent at the pool or on vacation to a lake or beach. If she wasn’t in the water, she was sitting close to it, watching swimmers, color, splashes, and patterns. She began drawing what she saw at an early age, choosing as one of her first subjects her own feet in the pool, distorted by the movement of rippling water.

The foundation for these paintings began, as most of her paintings do, with found imagery from the past. Harris explains, “I first started working this way years ago when I ran across a black and white photo from the 40’s of a woman with her child at the beach. At the time, I was a working artist with small children of my own. I could feel how fast time was flying by, one summer after another, and I just wanted it to all slow down somehow. Well, when I looked at that photo from the 40’s, I was sure that mom felt the same way. We were the same. So, I started painting that feeling- the freedom of summer, the joy of being alive and wanting to hold onto it but knowing it’s precious and fleeting. That’s what the paintings are about- that fleeting moment of something precious and important among the busyness of life, slowing it down to that one precious moment.”

This exhibition has divers, a favorite painting subject for Harris. Many of them are soaring in the air, composed and in perfect form, or as in The High Dive, they are poised, balanced, and ready to dive- all taking our breath away. 

On view: July 10 – August 14, 2021

What: “Tracey Sylvester Harris: The Swimming Pool”
Where: Skidmore Contemporary Art, 2525 Michigan Avenue, B-4, Santa Monica, 90404
Website: https://skidmorecontemporaryart.com/