L’arbre d’or. The 6th Continent 12/365.2018. J.Harms. Acrylic on paper. 10x15cm.
Row row the boat gently down the milky lake, our wandered settles on a crumb of an island to rest for the night under the golden tree. There he remains till dawn.
Au palais d’Iéna. 2018. J.Harms. Acrylic on paper. 40x50cm.
At the end of March this year, AD magazine hosted a show ( AD matières ) on contemporary interior decorating at the Palais d’Iéna in Paris. It focused mainly on decorative painting, and other wall finishes ( mosaïc, straw, unique wall-papers…). I was curious to see the new trends, and visited the site with some expectation. Since the decorative world is rather small, I quickly realised that almost everyone presented works of a similar palette of colors, warm golden hues, sometimes just plain gold leaf or paint, brushed over, or combed, or mixed with a darker color, so much so, that I painted the place with warm earth tones, simply because that’s how I remember it.
The show in itself was not very inspiring. However, the location was. The place has a bahausian flair to it. Coincidentally, I am half-way through Nicholas Fox Weber’s book “the Bahaus group”. I wonder if that had some influence on the choice of the subject and the way with which I painted it.
Yearly self-portrait with noren. 2018. J. Harms. 29x39cm. Acrylic on red paper.
This year’s portrait was more difficult to paint than the previous years. I painted and discarded several before finally painting this one. Ten years ago, almost to the day, I left France to go to Japan, where I lived and worked for a year and a half.
It was a tough yet rewarding and meaningful experience. It was there that I found my artistic language among the many colors and lines of the cityscape of Nagasaki.
While living there, I got to witness traditional holidays, and seasonal events. I also visited craft shops, I began collecting art too, and sent home many things, like this noren, a detail of which I painted in the background. It now hangs in my bedroom.
From May the 26th to June, 3rd, I will be exhibiting, along with 50 other artists, some of my paintings at the Château de Lamorlaye in the Oise region of France.
How exciting !
Neige fondante sur la place Niville. 2018. J.Harms. Acrylic on paper. 50x40cm.
The snow has begun melting, puddles are forming, but the triangle shaped “place Niville”, the second village square in my village retains a bit of its white blanket. Already the weather seems to warm up. I wish I could retain the snow just a little bit more.
La place du fort sous la neige. 2018. J.Harms. 29 x 39 cm. Acrylic on red paper.
I love snowscapes, so when my village got heavily covered in snow a couple weeks ago, I immediately went out to take pictures. I wanted to paint it. Not many people were out and about, but a couple foot prints on the Place du fort, one of the two village squares, were proof that another soul had been here possibly pulling a two-wheeled cart of some kind.
L’assiette de fruits de mer. J. Harms. 2018. 29 X 39 cm. Acrylic on paper.
A memorable day in the Crotoy, in the Baie de Somme region of France. A bright sunny day late last Autumn. My sister, a friend of hers , my mom and I packed a car and drove all the way to the beach. A lot of people had the same idea, which resulted in an hour long queue to eat sea food. But what a liberation when it finally came, that long awaited assiette de fruits de mer !
