- A Conversation with Harry Underwood
What does the term folk, or outsider, artist mean to you, and do you define yourself that way?
I don’t think of that label as having anything to do with my vision or how I approach work each day. I don’t consider myself part of a movement. I wasn’t aware of artists like Darger or Edward Hopper until I was meeting people at my shows and they began telling me I reminded them of all that. I’ve tried to limit my knowledge. I look at what’s in the galleries, and I try to do something else. Persistence is what art is about. The world is designed to wreck your imagination. School, church, wages. Things change, and I don’t expect I’ll be tied to folk art forever. It wouldn’t be bad if I was. A friend recently called it “Americana,” and I kind of like that.
Stencils of palm trees, bathing beauties, pools, bicycles, and vintage cars recur in your paintings. Why those images? Which typically comes first—scene or penciled text?
I was raised in south Florida, so I’ve leaned toward a sort of vacation atmosphere in my art. The reality is that I’ve cleaned more swimming pools than I actually swam in. My father built office buildings. I swam in canals and fished off bridges. I never believed in the fantasy supplied by travel brochures, but that sort of thing makes a nice backdrop for what I add with the pencils. For a long time the image I made was less important to me than the writing. Right now they’re given equal concern. It’s like a mild surrealism that I tinker with on the canvases. The automobiles I’ve got in pictures like Ligeia look more like candy to me, so perhaps I’m altering something that annoys me, mending reality.
I have to keep reminding myself of this, but it really works to figure out the dominant colors before I make an image. If I can’t see the colors, I should wait. I will write during the image process, or I might have something prepared first. The relationship between text and image seems to connect on its own. Subconscious and double meanings emerge. There is a tuning involved. A lot of self-censorship and editing to form the aesthetic. Some paintings are duds, and some are really very perfect for me, but witnessing the development is what I enjoy.
The surface cheer and nostalgia in your work seem underscored with longing. How do you define happiness? How is it represented in your paintings?
Happiness is imagining what’s around the corner. I’m terrible at being in the moment. I enjoy believing that there are still possibilities available, and I try to send that message. Painting didn’t happen for me until I was thirty-three years old. That’s when I knew I could do this for a long time without getting bored. I wouldn’t have found it without all of the difficulty I went through. [End Page 106]
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