Issue link: http://www.wacmagazine.com/i/1541020
16 WAC Magazine | wac.net first take grand staircase gallery By Mae Folsom Jacobson Artist JW Harrington discovered a love for painting in 2014 when he decided he wanted something more in his life. Aer 35 years as an urban studies profes- sor, Harrington shied his focus from academia to singing, golfing, and art. Singing was a familiar pastime, but art was new—and it stuck. "I felt right away that there is no wrong way to do it," he says. e creative freedom he found in painting led him to pursue in-depth lessons on composition and color theory. A personal dedication to understand- ing the ins and outs of his own process resulted in multiple painting series. Inspired by the likes of Clyfford Still and Kazimir Malevich, Harrington pre- fers to create abstract works on canvas or board. ese images, amorphous and interactive, are rendered in complemen- tary color palettes. While the hues are recognizable, the composition remains up to interpretation. It's at once familiar and curious. And that's on purpose. "I want to give people a fair amount of control over what they're seeing," he says. "Abstraction gives viewers that sense of input. e motivation is to get people to think." "Biomorphic Abstractions," a series on display this fall and winter in the WAC's Grand Staircase Gallery, presents images created completely from Har- rington's imagination. ey have some semblance to biological entities and are usually on distressed ground. "I carefully sketch the shapes while thinking about how they all interact," Harrington says. "ey are like animal or plant life but obscured." For Harrington, the creation of ab- straction involves control, a concept that seems antithetical to a visual language mostly independent from real-world ref- erences. e concentrated effort he puts into creating truly non-representational work sparks an innate sense of curiosity that grows the more you look. e viewer truly wonders, "What am I looking at?" "It's freeing and exciting," Harrington says. Stop by the Grand Staircase Gallery to muse on what you see in "Biomorphic Abstractions," on now through January. Learn more at jwharrington.com. The art of abstraction JW Harrington's work brings imagination to the forefront in the Grand Staircase Gallery "Yes, but" by JW Harrington. Learn about abstraction and Harrington's process from the painter himself during an Artist Reception in the Grand Staircase Gallery. This complimentary gathering begins at 5 pm on Tuesday, January 27. RSVP on the WAC app.