Active and alive, complex and meticulously detailed, Harris's Blue Beads is a visual dance of color and movement. Harris features an abundance of different fruits—watermelon, nectarines, grapes, and a grapefruit—yet as the title suggests, she draws the viewer’s attention towards the blue beaded necklace suspended from the opened drawer. Also on the table is a postcard from a mountainous destination, embellished with red and pink roses, and the wallpaper is likewise exuberantly adorned with pink hydrangeas.
In Harris’s words, “I stayed away from painting flowers for years, because I did not want to be perceived as a female painter who painted pretty pictures. Then, as I got older, I said to myself, ‘to hell with that.’” In addition, the compositional balance of Blue Beads witnesses her interest in the careful symmetry of early Italian and Flemish paintings, as well as an affinity for artists like Paul Cézanne (including his penchant for precariously positioned fruits). Blue Beads was first exhibited at Prince Street Gallery in New York and was also included in the first survey exhibition of oil paintings and gouaches by Harris held at Woodmere in fall 2001.
Born in New York City and raised in Little Compton, Rhode Island, Harris is the daughter of realist painters Audrey Buller and Lloyd Parsons. She moved to Philadelphia and began to paint, enrolling in Woodmere’s classes. Encouraged by her success, she entered a certificate program at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in 1974, where she began painting still lifes. Harris is also an avid gardener and includes her own blooms in her paintings.
