Red Deer city councillor and entrepreneur Paul Harris is showing his artistic side in an exhibit of boldly rendered sky-scapes at his Harris-Warke Gallery.
This painterly aspect of his personality is a side he’s more intent on exploring since taking on the role of city councillor in the last municipal election.
“The process of policy-making becomes so linear that it starts a pattern. All of a sudden, you’re not looking at things creatively anymore,” said Harris, who co-owns, with his partner Terry Warke, the Sunworks store on Ross Street, which contains the Harris-Warke Gallery.
Surrounded by his graphic paintings of changeable skies and landscapes, Harris admitted he goes into a decidedly non-linear head space whenever he puts brush to canvas, depicting shifting clouds and light patterns mostly from memory.
“I hope it does balance out — working as a councillor and doing more writing and painting,” he muses — for Harris finds that looking at things from a non-traditional angle is what makes him effective as a “community activist.” (“The day I think of myself as a politician is when I should quit,” he added.)
When examining any issue, Harris said, “I always try to think what are we really trying to accomplish? Should we keep doing things that way? . . . If we keep doing things the way we have for the last 50 years, it’s not going to serve us very well. . . . ”
What makes him an effective artist is a similar talent for seeing the big picture.
Harris’s oil and acrylic paintings of wide-open coastal landscapes, prairies and skies share a contemplative aspect.
“The practice of reflection is important,” said the artist, who set up church pews in the gallery to give viewers a chance to look at his exhibit, Firmamentum, from different angles.
One of his more striking works is Wormhole Over Rosebud. Harris said this painting was inspired by a trip he took to the Badlands in 2009.
He was struck by two images — of a giant corkscrew cloud that loomed over his friends as they hiked around the rim of Horseshoe Canyon, and of a spectacularly sunlit field near Rosebud. He combined both into one painting.
Some of Harris’s other abstracted landscapes depict the turquoise ocean and skies of Maui, but most of his turbulent skies are characteristically Albertan.
Red Dragon depicts the unusual cloud pattern he saw after returning from a trip to England.
“I was driving up from the airport and I saw this cloud formation that looked just like a Chinese dragon,” Harris explained.
While he counts among his inspirations Group of Seven painter Lawren Harris and French post-impressionist Paul Cézanne, Harris’s art training started at Ernest Manning High School in Calgary, where art teacher Sheena Rattray sparked his creativity by introducing him to ceramics and batik.
“She still inspires me, we’re still in touch,” said Harris, who recalls his younger self as “a geeky kid” trying to find his space.
While he once thought about enrolling in the Alberta College of Art and Design, Harris instead became waylaid by life. He took on various jobs in the oilfield, banking, hospitality and tourism, and retail.
Harris moved to Red Deer after meeting Warke, a Pine Lake native, and became an activist for local culture, a vigorous downtown and the environment.
It was in 1988 that Harris took an art class from David More at Red Deer College and that reignited his artistic creativity. He has since turned his eyes to the skies because “the sky connects us all.”
Harris hopes his paintings feel “lyrical, dramatic and alive — to call attention to the ever-changing present we live in, but forget to notice, to remind us to be part of all this life has to offer.”
While he’s never satisfied with what he’s created, Harris said, “All artists consider their art unfinished — but then life is unfinished.”
A closing reception will be held on Dec. 23 from 6 to 8 p.m. The Harris-Warke Gallery is located at 4924 Ross St.
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com