Florida Remembered - Memory Paintings by Alyne Harris ARTIST MEET AND GREET

Jeanine Taylor Folk Art welcomes longtime friend and memory painter, Alyne Harris for an afternoon opening reception of her latest solo show, Florida Remembered. Meet the artist Saturday, May 15th between noon and 2pm and learn what inspires her. Harris’ Southern expressionist style of painting focuses on depictions of Florida’s abundant landscape, cultural traditions and growing up in the deep south.

Born in 1943, Alyne Harris has lived in Gainesville, Florida virtually all of her life and is a distant relative of Florida sculptor, Jesse Aaron (1887-1979). Harris has always felt the compulsion to create. As a child she would rather draw in the sand on the playground than play with the other children. Her cherished heritage and connections to the past are celebrated in her engaging art.

When the weather is nice, Harris sits on her front porch to paint and enlists an old dress as an apron. Her imagery embraces her spirit of imagination as seen in her scenes of sunflowers and cloud floating angels. Harris' work draws heavily from African-American traditions passed down by oral history and first hand experience. Jumping the broom in her wedding scenes, dinner on the church grounds and baptisms in a river or church pool are reoccurring motifs.

Harris' paintings call on viewers to travel the paths of their own recollections, an exchange that becomes part of the work itself. Her art reminds the viewer that revisiting the past can connect them with the present and the future.