Philosophical Statement
Philip E. Harding
October 2, 2006
I treasure the ideal of the artist as scholar working in seclusion. Having spent most of the 1980s and 90s making art in anonymity in a small garden cottage in Eastern Washington state, much of my life has been just that. From 1996 to 2000 I lived in Seattle studying Sanskrit and Art history at the University of Washington and from 2000 to 2004 I lived in Columbus Ohio studying South Asian Art History at The Ohio State University. While I desire to make art more than to practice art history, I place a high value on the knowledge of history and culture and want to create from a consciousness informed by that knowledge. I am now back in my Eastern Washington garden cottage, still studying and making art, although now I am spending most of my time building a new house about a block away and getting this place ready to sell.
I see my art as a discipline - a sort of yoga or form of visual meditation. I use it as an instrument to try to transcend myself and the difficulties of life. It is a state of being - a place of solace and vision. The underlying theme of several series of drawings I have explored is a sort of knitting of dualistic extremes. This often involves various juxtapositions of geometric patterns with fluid, organic designs. I see this as a yin-yang balance between spirit and matter, intellect and intuition, or between rational, a priori, archetypal forms or ideas, and intuitive, emotional, transitory, worldly experiences.
The works that are the most esoteric and personal are the mandalas. Begun in the early 1080s and periodically revisited ever few years, these works typically use the grids and generative geometry of Hindu temples as a point of departure but often take on a life of their own. Many have been reworked repeatedly over the years having layers of oil pastels built up, scraped off, and re-layered until they become objects I would never have planned but with which I have considerable personal investment. This series however, neither traditional nor modern, has never found its place in the art market. I have spent thousands of hours on the series but have only sold a few. I now think they belong together as a set, unframed, like a large unbound book. Indeed, if I could find a way to buy back the few I have sold I would do so.
The Horizon, Patterns in Space, and Irregular Shape series are all created much more directly and seldom if ever reworked. I have a sense of looking out into infinity but with a view managed by a set of proportional borders and bars. Over a period of some ten years this series evolved to include various types of patterns. On one level I am interested in the relationship of infinite surfaces formed of rigid or fixed geometric patterns juxtaposed set against constantly changing fluid patterns of spheres or irregular shapes. On another level I am interested in infinite variety within set parameters. For example, a sphere is a very limited motif for a pattern but one can vary their size and spacing without limit -- constant change of a changeless form.
The Common Currency series was a brief series where I was painting directly on one dollar bills. A comment on art, money and intrinsic VS commodity value. The reliquary in the sculpture section is also about value, although more personal. Within the display case are artifacts which hold personal meaning and memories. Value exists within the objects but it is not commodity value and when my memory goes so does access to these values. I have a series of additional cases planned that will explore both personal issues (such as the lives friends and family member) and cultural values. I would spend more time on sculpture but it requires more in the way of studio and storage space than I can currently manage.
The Line Work section is less conceptual and more spontaneous. I don't have much time to draw, paint or sculpt these days but I try to do a little drawing on a regular basis. I'm not sure where this series is going to take me, or how these images may work their way into other media, but for right now it is a way to keep my mind active and inventive.