Henrietta Harris

Henrietta Harris makes delicate, detailed drawings, paintings, and illustrations, working with paper, pen, watercolor, gouache, acrylic, and sometimes gold leaf. Portraits of friends and strangers compose the bulk of her output, which also includes images of hands, faces, brains, mountains, and food, among other subjects. In her portraits, she merges a naturalistic and surrealistic approach. Harris depicts faceless heads on barely visible necks and shoulders; heads that appear to be dissipating like smoke; and doubled, fragmented faces, as if reflected in a cracked mirror. Harris only uses a computer to plan her compositions, which she executes entirely by hand. She describes her work as having “a timeless look that won’t go in or out of fashion.”