Figures in landscape

This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).

The title of this painting is slightly misleading. Rather than being in the landscape, many of Jeffrey Harris’s figures have broken free of gravity to float untethered in the eerie yellow sky above.

Harris’s paintings often draw inspiration from strange corners of art history. Here, his levitating figures are reminiscent of altar paintings by the fifteenth-century Sienese artist Sassetta, in which saints fly freely through the air to perform miracles. Sassetta’s work drew on medieval theology, which claimed that one’s spirit could travel in dreams performing good or evil deeds while the body slept.

Christian imagery appears throughout Harris’s painting, as robed saints mingle with commoners and swimmers perform baptismal rites in a pool. However, unlike his one-time mentor Colin McCahon, Harris is more interested in probing the emotional force of these symbols than exploring their spiritual significance. Placed in a New Zealand landscape, the familiar religious iconography has been removed from its original context, emptying it of doctrinal meaning. Harris’s figures wander meaninglessly through their existential crises, disengaged from one another. Their palms are raised as if waiting to receive something — but what? There is no clear religious destination for these untethered souls.

Devoid of a clear moral or spiritual narrative, Figures in landscape can instead be read as a deeply personal exploration of human relationships. It is significant that the floating baby, swaddled like the infant Christ, is the only figure that gazes out at the viewer. The year before this was painted, Harris was devastated by the death of his infant daughter from a congenital heart condition. Symbolising both innocence and tragedy, the floating baby became a recurring motif in his paintings, as he processed the emotional impact of this event on his family. Although the painting is filled with people, the figures never meet each other’s gaze — everyone is alone in a crowd.

Characterised by a haunting intensity, Harris’s work is painted in a deliberately naïve style that gives his figures a sense of psychological tension and a formal stiffness. Like scenes from a feverish dream, his paintings are filled with haunting symbols that hint at — but ultimately deny us — a coherent narrative.

Chelsea Nichols