"The Outwin 2016" Finalist: Anne Harris

Out of over 2,500 entries in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, 43 artists have their work shown in the exhibition “The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today.” Read more about one of the finalists, Anne Harris.

What about the sitter inspired you? How did the sitter inspire this specific portrait?

For me, the sitter (usually me) is a starting point and a kind of home base.  I often paint while just looking at the painting, but I’ll look in a mirror, or at a model, to scrutinize a physical fact, something needed to make the painting believable. In the end, the painting is an invention, a fiction. It's a portrait of the person in the painting — related to the sitter, but existing on its own terms.

Broadly, I’ve been using self-portraiture for many years as a way of seeing “inside out.” I’m inside the container of my own skin, looking out at my reflection, trying to look back in.  What I see shifts, from day to day and year to year. I’m changing, but also, the way I see changes. Self-perception is slippery. This fascinates me.

How did your work develop from idea to execution?

By painting and drawing. A drawing leads to another drawing, which may lead to a painting, which may lead to another painting, and so on. Ideas evolve through the making of work. Art doesn’t always start with an idea that is then executed. 

What relationship do the materials have to the meaning?

Everything relates to meaning.  In the case of oil paint: it’s skin-like, translucent, and sensuous. It has weight, fluidity, viscosity and an organic elasticity. It’s perfect for painting flesh, membrane, body fluids and air. Really, it’s perfect.

How does the piece fit within your larger body of work?

I’ve been re-inventing my self-portrait for the last 27 years. This painting is an example of that. It’s not that my likeness is amazing but rather, that self-perception is so malleable that, for me, it becomes a catalyst for invention. I think about mortality, aging, awkwardness, the relationship between subtlety and intensity, and lately, between visibility and invisibility.

You can see Harris’s work in “The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today,” up now through Jan. 8, 2017. Also, be sure to vote in our People’s Choice Competition.