“I am a passionate painter focused on representing both seen and unseen elements of the environment.” — Bunny Harvey
Bunny Harvey knows her environment intimately; she knows the Latin names of the plants, the specific birds calling, and the habits of insects that populate daily life on her hill farm above Tunbridge, Vermont. Although Harvey’s life and work are influenced by extended time spent in New York City; Providence, Rhode Island; and Rome, it is northern New England that shines through her art.
Harvey’s paintings hum and thrum, leap from micro to macro. They shout in places, vibrate quietly in others, and often switch perspectives. Her paintings take you on a journey. Somehow, through paint and her own unique conceptual theories, Harvey expresses temporal reality and the presence of rhythm and sound, temperature, and sometimes, historic information. Harvey explains, “I want the paintings to stand on their own as reminders that it is a wonderful thing to ‘get lost’ in a pond, a wooded place, a field, or in a work of art, and come away renewed, energized, thoughtful, confused, enlightened, angry, or amused.” Elements in her paintings reflect an awareness of events – some of which cannot be seen but are essential to the experience of truly being in a place.
Here, in Reflections: Breaths and Murmurs, she takes us into a winter scene. There is a traditional horizon line, which lures us into the known, and then the music begins. First there are the geometric angles sweeping us in icy avenues toward the distant horizon. The wind appears as the foreground plants blur above the ice, and repeated black marks rustle and shake. This is a landscape experienced over time, not a snapshot of a moment. On the left panel there appears a kind of whirling dervish emanating from the ice as an indistinct column of energy. It could be a sound or the memory of a sound. This is the way the artist is translating her experience of the world. The work is a visual gathering of what we see, what we know, and what our other senses experience over time.
Among her many awards and distinctions are The Rome Prize in Painting from the American Academy in Rome, the Pell Award for Excellence in the Arts, The Rhode Island School of Design Alumni Award for Professional Achievement, and The Pinanski Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Bunny Harvey was a professor of art at Wellesley College for 39 years and was exclusively represented by galleries in New York City during those years. Now, living in Vermont, she is representing herself. Her resumé, additional works, and contact information are available at bunnyharvey.com.