ARTIST

Harry Bliss’ most recent works are large totemic polychromed wood and mixed media constructions.  These works are the result of a search for an expressive mythology of spirit and nature.  These pieces utilize a basic universal symbolism of the past and of remnants of that past which persist into the present, particularly in the arts of the Southwest and Latin America.

Each piece is unique in form and interpretation, being the result of unpremeditated search and discovery of primitive memory and dream.  They are a reaching out and back for structures, symbolic relationship and colors, which evoke and dramatize an ancient, persistent harmony with the cycles and forces of the natural world.  They are beguiling and theatrical, as well as philosophically challenging and, in part, represent a counterbalance to the technological dominance of nature and estrangement from it, widely practiced today.  As with ancient artifacts which serve to remind us of our humbler more harmonious past relationships with our world, these constructions are meant to inspire that ‘primitive’ sense of sympathy and harmony which we all possess.

When asked to "explain" the intuitive works, the artist asks the viewer to also look intuitively and discover their own childhood and "tribal memory" in the symbolism and associations of each piece.