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My work is layered, detailed, colourful and complicated.  It's reflective of the incredible detail in the natural world and my personal enjoyment of the sensual pleaures of "deep looking".  

Life is fast these days.  Fast, and it seems, loaded with an infinity of flashing images and sounds.

For many years I have been intrigued by the work of deep listening pioneer Pauline Oliveros. From the Deep Listening website, "The practice of deep listening is intended to heighten awareness of sound, silence and sounding".

Why not also "Deep Looking"?  Let's say a practice of deep looking is to heighten awareness of form, depth and colour.   Let's consider a practice of gazing and contemplation and voyaging into works of art, not just for what at first glance is the most obvious, but in depth, investigating different areas of the piece, zooming in and out mentally between depth and surface and big picture and detail.  

I have visited hundreds of galleries and musieums and used to try to see everything!  The gallery and museum must offer variety to appeal to different viewers or to fairly represent an artist or a chosen theme, but I no longer try and see everything.  It is more valuable to me to gaze upon a few works in depth and allow them to transport me into the artist's world.  

As an artist I love creating imaginary worlds than can be repeatedly revisited, that are detailed enough to include new discoveries with repeated viewing. 

I love mystery and surprises and making pieces that create lots of spaces for viewers to enter.

In this piece, Red Ladder Dream, the houses came as surprise, even to me!  When they started appearing it took very little detail painting to enhance their prescence. The red ladders are obvious, then as the town and streets slowly come into focus viewers make their own discoveries and enjoy the process and play of it. 

Allyna Harris  Red Ladder Dream 2013  30x40" acrylic on canvas (sold)

In this piece, Reach Out:Go In, two big blue arms and hands first appeared, reaching up towards the two upper corners of the painting.  

I painted this outside in summertime, under a big oak tree.  The branches and deep glossy leaves formed a shifting green overlay in front of the darker firs of the forest behind.  It is an abstract painting but based on the energy, forms, colours and movements of the real things around it.  A light  breeze kept everything fluttering and the light gradually changed from cloud cover to the clouds breaking open in a glorious pink, gold and orange sunset.  The painting finally came to rest but the movement and the shifting of the daylight are still in there.

Allyna Harris  Reach Out:Go In 2011,  30x40" acrylic on canvas