Leather and Lace

Laced leather connect these two shapes together in this detail of Red Onyx III by Harkrader. Thick medium embedded with sand and pumice mixed into the white paint anchor the left lace. Inside that shape lives a small collage. Tension is created as the leather grips the black shape on the right. Living inside this black shape resides a small collage embedded in thick medium of cloth and pumice obscured in the black paint.

Action Abstraction - Splat!

Splat! Harkrader's hand bounces off the face of the canvas after aim, throw, release and contact. Action abstracts may leave evidence of an artist's body movement as clues of one's action on/above the canvas. Art history  was made when artist's; Pollock, de Kooning and Frankenthaler's action abstraction paintings transformed New York City into the post war mecca for the avant-garde.
http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/ActionAbstraction

Black Onyx

Black Onyx (detail) resembles a warm-blooded aquatic vertebrate of leather with a fiberous tail. The rusted wire that surrounds, floats the attachment and provides support by penetrating the face of the canvas. Black paint was drizzled (Pollock fashion : )) and poured upon the canvas. The canvas when viewed in its entirety seems to create planetary space of dimension and time...or deep sea environments, below the thermocline, where light does not penetrate.

Afterwords: Lab coat for a mad scientist

 

Detail of Harkrader's 'Afterwords', a lab coat he wore at the Studios on the Square for 4 years.

 Soiled with the paint of many paintings, Harkrader embellished the jacket with collage from fashion and culture magazines, in addition to figurative drawings in paint on the front, rear, sleeves, cuffs, etc. The lab coat was exhibited in an exhibition at KRONOS Gallery located in Staunton, Virginia approx. 2007. Content circling the collage above contains the text 'Afterwords' which is one of his and Elle's favorite breakfast houses in Dupont Circle / Connecticut Ave, Washington, DC. They made multiple trips to DC's Aaron Gallery, which still represents Harkrader's work. Afterwords Cafe and Grill is located in Kramerbooks.

http://www.kramers.com/

Shrine Group Exhibit Opening & You Are Invited

You are invited to 'Shrines and Other Things' Saturday night 8-11pm located in the industrial section of 419 Luck Ave. in Roanoke City. The group exhibit, by title alone may indicate and include others work that is reverent, irreverent, fun, bizarre, and more. Come with you mind and have it open. Above is the Harkrader installation titled 'Crucifixion Fragmenta-the installation of  found and created objects'. This arrangement includes his painting, 3D sculptures, two crucificitions, the Black Madonna, Sacrifice Soldier, all complete with an altar of votive candles, beads, books, floor cloth, communion symbolism and more. This installation is self interpretive leaving room for the viewer to cipher their own meaning from the numerous religious, spiritual and literary content. This event is made possible by Unicorn Stables Project & Tif Robinette.

'Red Onyx VI' resides in the District of Columbia

Detail of Red Onyx VI exhibits approximately a 9x12 inch area at the bottom center section of the canvas face. The actual canvas size is 60"x48". This collage of figures living within the composition is minimal compared to the large red shape that lives above this selection and they give the canvas an erotic tilt. Harkrader's 'Onyx' series is homage to Rothko in the use of a large rectangle located below or above a smaller rectangle as seen in Rothko's fluid color washes on raw canvas. The difference is Harkrader has embellished his canvases to include embedded elements living above, below and beside the rectangles. Deeply embedded collage, fibers, copper, pumice, sand, coal, glass and other media occupy this complex composition described by one viewer as 'Rothko on steroids'. This canvas was sold by Aaron Gallery in Washington, DC to a neighborhood collector.

Happy New Year Canvas Sculpture (detail)

Urban canvas (detail).

Diodes, resistors, plastic, heat sinks, fibers, and copper reside on this canvas face. The same media and medium lie embedded in the epoxy, resin, and color medium mix that cover the canvas and submerge the elements. Urban and  masculine with a touch of feminine as the circle of green fiber reside in the connector sphere. A landscape of earth and urban, organic and digital, masculine and feminine, canvas and sculpture combined into one work of art fabricated to hang on a vertical surface.