Shirley Harrison

As a child, I loved art and all things creative.  I started drawing with pen and paper, reading every book available, no matter the subject, and writing skits and plays that my peers acted out in school.  In high school, I became more serious about the process of visual art and took painting classes.  I continued to learn the basics of anatomy and color and technique throughout my college years.  It was years later that I penned my first mystery novel.  I have since had seven novels published.  And while I continued to hone my art skills through numerous oil on canvas paintings, my love affair with clay sculpture came much, much later as I sampled new mediums. 

Over the years, I’ve come to view beauty as a mystery, and I do love a mystery.  But even more, I love the emotional journey one must travel to reach mystery’s answer.  That has become my singular motivation in creating art, whether it’s writing a suspense novel, creating an oil painting, or sculpting a clay figure.  I seek out the emotional connection conveyed through the revelation of beauty in everyday scenes and objects.

In seeking an answer to the question, ‘what is beauty?’, the simplest scene can be rife with emotional mystery: the interplay of light juxtaposed with dark becomes both compelling and lingering...an anonymous crowd beholding a magnificent sunset begs a query...the human figure is unending in its elegant undulations.  Currently, one of my favorite subjects for art is the human figure.  More than anything else, it demands an emotional commitment from both the artist and viewer, and it offers me my best challenge ever to seek out new avenues of beauty’s mystery through creativity. 

 Beyond the courses and classes, I consider myself mostly self-taught, and I’ll continue to paint, sculpt, and write about what speaks to my emotional self.  And on my journey to discover the mystery of beauty, I strive to express my findings as powerfully as I can through my art.