I am a perceptual painter, a natural painter. I rely on instinct, inspiration and my store of experiences past. The landscapes of Cape Ann, the rocky shoreline, salt marshes and wooded moraines a ciel ouvert-under the open sky-assert themselves on me. With urgency and a painter's strategy, I pay close attention to the changing elements, the rising tide, passing clouds, lengthening shadows and sinking sun.

 

I was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1937, growing up from the age of 10 in Raleigh, the then-diminutive capitol city I remember as the perfect place to be nurtured. Immediately upon receiving a B.F.A. in Painting in 1959 from the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina, I migrated to New York. Other than five years in San Francisco, I have lived there ever since, dividing the year between New York and Gloucester throughout the nearly thirty years I spent with Nell Blaine and the years subsequent to her death in 1996.

—Carolyn Harris, In Plein View

	At Henry's Pond, Pebble Beach Artist: Carolyn Harris Date of Work: 1989 Medium: Watercolor Accession Number: 2842 Credit Line: Gift of the artist, 1993 Collections: Land and Seascapes
	Rocky Neck from the Boat Garden, IV Artist: Carolyn Harris Date of Work: 1988 Medium: Oil on canvas Accession Number: 2012.5 Credit Line: Gift of the artist, 2012 Collections: Land and Seascapes

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