Kerry Harding creates atmospheric spaces of deep contemplation and ephemerality. Her soft, surreal environments are inspired by the weathered Cornish landscape surrounding her studio. Each piece contains a poetic resonance, captured through atmospheric hazes, a muted silvery palette and gentle layers of texture. Figurative references, such as architectural structures or natural forms, are often used by Harding to pin and sometimes exaggerate her visual grounds. She offers us visual clues which playfully tease our perspective, and also make specific reference to motifs of the North Cornish landscape.
Bodies of water also regularly feature, in which a delicate undulating sense of movement is captured with photorealistic precision. Harding's compelling curiosity for painterly experimentation opens the door to process and materiality, in which unpredictability and the finesse of control are delicately balanced. In Chapel Pink II for example, a beautifully soft and stunningly realistic representation of rippled water is contrasted with a section of pure painterly experimentation. The materials blotch and run, and seem to grow in a purely organic manner.
Experimentation is central to Harding's creative approach; she imitates the processes at play within the natural world layering material, taking material away, re-layering. This constant questioning and reworking of her canvases results in a subtlety of texture, and a sense of history and visual depth.
Harding received her BA from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford University, and her Masters from Falmouth College of Art. She exhibits throughout Cornwall, the South West and London, as well as South Africa, the USA and Australia and currently teaches at St Ives School of Painting in Cornwall.