CLARKSVILLE, TN – Over the course of 2020, Tennessee artist Paul Harmon created more than 100 works all under the size of 10 inches. Most of these small oil paintings are making their debut in the Planters Bank Peg Harvill Gallery of the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center this month.
Along with a selection of Harmon’s painted boxes and bottles, the exhibition, The Petite Voyage, treats viewers to the still lifes and figures reminiscent of the artist’s much larger canvases. Among these familiar scenes is a forest of landscapes full of red-roofed houses and swaying trees, not often found in Harmon’s series.
Harmon says of the work, “About the little oils (3-by-4, 4-by-5 and 5-by-7), I have always had a fondness for little amateur landscapes that I have admired in Paris flea markets. Naive and honest, but without an awareness of art markets or the like. An old saying has it that artists are art collectors that cannot afford to buy art. In that vein, I have painted my own personal collection of art most usually made by shut-ins and old deep-country widows. About the naive part, I am not, but somewhere amid painting several hundred very little paintings, I drifted far away from the fast lane world and entered into a very sweet and simple place.”
Paul Harmon’s work is represented in numerous galleries, museums, major corporate and private collections in Europe, Asia and the USA. Collections include the Tennessee State Museum, the Tampa Museum of Art, the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, the Museum of the Principality of Monaco and the city of Caen, France. The Petite Voyage is on view now through Feb. 6.