Artist Portfolio: Harry Underwood

"I continue to depict an idea of pleasure that I've been refining over the past decade. A form of wishful thinking. The pictures have a postcard style of arrangement, a painted image supplemented by a slogan and other text ideas, usually written with pencil, painted brightly and effacing reality. The arbitrary use of text and image produces more angles for interpretation from piece to piece while disclosing truths I'm curious to understand. It's an unraveling that keeps me interested and compels me. In the end I feel that it is my self that is on display in each work. A combination of subconscious thoughts and consciousness. A form of sincerity that's dug up, and made to appear simple. Transforming the past motivates my writing, it's how I'll start. I then begin to journal or reshape these old memories, observations, and feelings. I work with ideas of obsession or fascinations. There is a satirical treatment given to some thoughts I have, as a way to sweeten something that in it's raw form sometimes holds too much weight to articulate. Art aids the understanding of existence, and my habit is to plant a serious topic amid a lot of distractions that are pleasant for me. I find humor in this effort. A portion of this exhibit includes a series of pictures that use single word titles written above the object or image written in a "Tail" style of font like those common in athletic logos. I think of them as Neon signs. I call it my "Neon series". The exhibit also includes a three by six foot panoramic street scene made to resemble the town in which I was raised. The title is intended to be a caricature of religious ideas, and a nod to the subconscious aspect of our minds."