HARRINGTON, Michael

Harrington’s paintings are inspired by particular moments – a scene glimpsed through his car window or a childhood memory. These specific life snapshots are deliberately concealed in the painting process and in the finished work. The figures that populate his images are just barely suggested, their blurred faces and bodies modelled loosely in daubs of bright paint and situated in darkened environments. The images are always ambiguous, and never illustrative.

All of the paintings suggest a quiet tension, and their dramatic quality is amplified by the way that Harrington applies his paint. His landscapes are executed in the manner and palette of the Romantics, then contemporary imagery is added in shimmering neon colors. Harrington is also careful to apply contrasting warm and cold colors to enhance the narrative quality of his compositions, indicating the unease of one character, for example, against the comfort of another.

Harrington uses the Old Master trick of capturing with a calligraphic twist of his paintbrush the set of a person’s shoulders or crook of an arm raising a takeout coffee cup.

Available work :