Anne Harris' Distorted Self Portraits

Claire Voon, Chicago magazine, January 17, 2020
BY CLAIRE VOON
JANUARY 17, 2020, 9:47 AM
 
‘Portrait (Gold Hair)’ by Anne Harris
Photo: Courtesy of Anne Harris

 

The 58-year-old painter, who lives in west suburban Riverside, is fascinated by the eyelid — its beauty but also its contradictions: dry and wet, fragile and protective, open and shut. The small, gossamer oil paintings in 39 Eyelids, her solo show running January 19 to February 29 at Goldfinch, are intended to act metaphorically as such, distorted self-portraits veiled in a potent mystery. “There’s something in them that holds my various anxieties and insecurities,” she says. Harris repeatedly reworked the one pictured above, Portrait (Gold Hair), until she felt content with it. “It’s not very often that I’m really completely satisfied with what I’ve done. But I know when I feel like I’ve been truthful — I look at the painting and I fall into it. For me, that’s the way a great portrait functions.”