Lesley Harry

I am a Falmouth based artist heavily influenced by the natural environment.

I’d like my mantra to be ‘less is more’. I’m interested in revealing the essential and distinctive shape and feel of a place and encouraging a second more considered look. 

Drawing and mark making is integral to my practice and helps me observe and sense my surroundings, both on the coast, and from the sea. A residency at Brison Veor, Cape Cornwall in 2022 enabled me to refine my mark making and led to new strand of work in Indian ink. 

Although drawing and mark making in the outdoors underpin my practice, I am better known as a printmaker. My choice of print technique is dictated by my response to a specific environment or situation. Etching best captures the abstract textures in rock, snow and water whilst screen printing satisfies my love of hard edge graphic images and flat vibrant colour.

The “Edge and Echo’ series of screen prints developed since 2014 are intended as bold, joyful experiments in colour combinations based upon algae, ferns, seeds and lichen that abound in Cornwall. I am interested in the interrelationships between colours, hard and soft forms, negative and positive spaces and how through the different arrangements of the same images an artist can influence the viewers experience. They work as individual artworks or can be grouped to create a larger, unique array. 

The Seacliff Etchings are based upon sketches and photographs of the Norwegian Coast and Arctic taken over a 12-day coastal voyage in 2014. The Rock Etchings are the result of a visit to the Alps in 2015, and annual visits the Black Mountains are the inspiration for the River Etchings. The River Fal and West Penwith coastline have been the inspiration for more recent work. All these environments are full of possibilities and my response is a pared-back exploration of unfamiliar perspectives, scale, pattern and abstraction. 

I am a member of Cornwall Craft Association and am an Associate at the Penwith Gallery, St Ives. 

Exhibitions

FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS 

2024  ‘Lode’, width Sue Davis & Jane Smith, RCPS, Falmouth (Sept)

EXHIBITIONS 

2024  ‘Friends of RWA’, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol

2023  ‘FORM’ Art Fair with CCA Falmouth

2023  ‘Lode’ with Sue Davis & Jane Smith, 12 May – 12 June, Penwith Gallery, St Ives.

2022  ‘Connections – Print & Ceramics’, with printmaker John Howard, RCPS Falmouth.

2022  ‘Prints from the John Howard Print Studio’, RCPS, Falmouth.

2022  ‘Flux’ with Sue Davis & Jane Smith, RCPS Falmouth.

2021  ‘Connections – Print & Ceramics’, with printmaker Sally Spens, RCPS Falmouth.

2021  ‘Arc’ with Sue Davis & Jane Smith, Penwith, St Ives. 

2019  ‘Echoes’ with Sue Davis & Jane Smith, Penwith Gallery, St Ives.

2019  ‘Enso’ with Suzanne Bethell & Paulette Bansal, Waterside Arts Centre, Sale. 

2018  ‘Curve’ with Sue Davis & Jane Smith, RCPS Falmouth.

2018  ‘Coast’, with Madeleine Strobel & Jane Smith, RCPS Falmouth.

2017  ‘Edge’, with Sue Davis & Jane Smith, RCPS Falmouth.

2016  ‘Five Ways’, with Bob Dawson, Roy Goodman, Elizabeth Rose, & Jane Smith, Penwith Gallery , St Ives.

2016  ‘Flow’, with Sue Davis & Jane Smith, RCPS Falmouth.

RESIDENCIES

2022  October – Brisons Veor, Cape Cornwall.

COMMISSIONS

2021  Album cover artwork for “Visions of Light’ by Ishmael Ensemble.

GALLERIES

Work is on permanent display at: 

Cornwall Crafts Association, Trelissick Gallery, Trelissick, Feock, Truro. TR3 6QL. www.cornwallcrafts.co.uk

The Poly Guild Falmouth, 24, Church Street, Falmouth TR11 3EG.  www.thepoly.org

The John Howard Print Studios, Jubilee Wharf, Penryn. TR108FG.

Contact Details

Please send all enquires to Lesley Harry at lesley@lesleyharry.info

Echoes 2019, Penwith Gallery, St Ives

Flow 2016, The Poly, Falmouth