Rebecca Harper 'The Waters of Dwelling'

Rebecca Harper
The Waters of Dwelling
Rebecca Harper
The Waters of Dwelling

“They both listened silently to the water,
which to them was not just water, but the
voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of
perpetual Becoming.”
Hermann Hesse, ‘Siddhartha’

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Introduction
Anima Mundi are delighted to present
‘The Waters of Dwelling’ by Rebecca
Harper, her second solo exhibition at
the gallery incorporating small and
large scale paintings and objects.
Made over the past two years, works
address both self-imposed ritual and
consolation, and perform as a flowing
marker for both endings and beginning
resultant from profound and ongoing
change, loss, and discovery. Harper
states “As many people have, I’ve been
dealing with various types of fear and
loss in my life lately, consequently I’ve
been reflecting and viewing the world in
a way that I hadn’t previously. This body
of work, made primarily during lockdown,
became much more introspective as
our worlds grew smaller. Through loss
and grief, the search for meaning and
the need for solace grew greater than
ever. A profound need for physical and
emotional connection, not just to one
another, but also to the natural world,
became all the more significant.”
The exhibition manifests as a reflection
of the artists immediate environment,
presented as if the stage of a play,
inhabited with a cast of familiar
characters that rotate around the
outskirts of her childhood riverside
home, where she has been isolating
with her parents, sibling, and partner.
The characters are not portraits as such,
more like actors that play a role, filling
in for particular people on stage. This
set reflects the psychological locations
that she inhabits and those that
inhabit her.
For Harper, making these paintings
through a deeply personal lens became
an opportunity to examine a period of
rapid global change, acknowledging
an individual and worldly capacity to
live at the edge of the precipice. One
which involves all of us dealing with
the extreme challenges presented to
us through the ensuing uncertain and
unsettled. She references what Freud
refers to as the ‘Death of Eros’ where
the great undercurrents of human
experience are hopelessly locked in a
perpetual state of battle, with opposing
forces constantly at play. We all must
attempt to steer our ship and avoid
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drowning in the complex dichotomous
waters of freedom and constraint,
strength and vulnerability, kindness
and hate, constructive and destructive,
dark and light and ultimately life
and death. Attempting to not become
overwhelmed, avoiding the deluge, as
the tide rises.
In a prosaic sense the river became
symbolic of the artists home, located
at the water’s edge, but in a more
profound sense, as the exhibition
title alludes, it also carries wider and
deeper references. We see rivers flow,
clouds rain, and rainwater dissipate,
nourishing and accommodating us and
other objects, and on a more personal
level we see tears fall and water slip
through fingers. The ritualistic nature
of water helps to cleanse, heal, bless,
and purify, and through this it connects
us to ourselves, others, to life and to
earth – it is a unifying element. Harper
says “I’ve been thinking about our acts
of effortless surrender to the natural
cycles of the world. We are reminded
that the water accommodates us, we
are supported, we are not resisted, it
sustains us, cleanses us and we are
weightless to it.”
Much like in the ideas of the Tao in
Chinese philosophy, the route of water
explores alignment with the rhythms of
the elements both within and outside
the body. The ebb and flow of ‘The
Rivers of Dwelling’ inspires immersion
for both loosing and finding the self
again as part of a greater whole. We
become a part of the water as the water
is a part of us, conjoining our inner and
outer physical worlds in metaphysical
unity. There is a surrendering to nature
as an opening for wider thought and a
deeper searching for connection.
The main protagonist of many of these
paintings, has become a kind of guiding
spirit of self, an avatar for the artist
in a constant stream of uncertainty, as
Harper says “she’s quite reliable and
she turns up again and again when I
need her, this reoccurring blond figure,
the guiding spirit of me, is a reminder
of the cycles of life, strength and
rebirth: she is still very present and
helps to carry the load.”
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Weeping
acrylic on canvas, 180 x 140 cm | 71 x 55 in
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Willow Wallow
acrylic on canvas, 170 x 210 cm | 67 x 83 in
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The Watch Tower
acrylic on canvas, 180 x 150 cm | 71 x 59 in
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The Loss of Eros
acrylic on canvas, 180 x 210 cm | 71 x 83 in
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Spellbind Reflecting
acrylic on canvas, 102 x 79 cm | 40 x 31 in
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Until the Mud Settles and the Water is Clear, I Watch My Back
acrylic on canvas, 50 x 40 cm | 20 x 16 in
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‘The Waters of Dwelling’ by Hettie Judah
The figures in Rebecca Harper’s
recent paintings are caught between
flowing water and radiant light. These
earthly beings, pictured within a vivid
and otherworldly spectrum of colour,
perform as proxies for the artist, her
mother, brother and partner. During
15 months spent at her childhood
home on the Thames, the river has
become a central presence in Harper’s
sketches and paintings, and supplied a
symbolic vocabulary.
The works are united by the visual rhythm
of floating crosses: the “vibrations”
produced by “the infinite combinations
of colour” described by Sonia Delaunay.
They suggest the sparkle of light on
water, while veiling the paintings in
a grid of colour. A family of swans
reflected in water is reduced to a series
of doubled forms, puzzling and abstract.
Bursts of prismatic light appear in
rainbows and concentric ripples
on the water, recalling works by
William Blake and Evelyn De Morgan
(both, for a period, followers of the
mystic Emanuel Swedenborg) in
which the chromatic spectrum is
associated with divine light and the
spiritual realm.
The heightened, visionary tone of ‘The
Waters of Dwelling’ captures the peculiar
mood of the last year: both the universal
sensation of disjunction, and the specific
emotional circumstances of this group.
In Rivers of Woe an embracing couple
appears on the shore, their backs turned
like the melancholy figures in Edvard
Munch’s Two People. The Lonely Ones
(1899) – Harper denies us the spectacle
of their unhappiness and we are closed
off from the scene. A similar distancing
occurs in ‘What You Wished and Wished
Away’ in which we see three figures
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from behind as they light candles in
paper boats and send them into the river.
Harper has spoken of water as an
element of ritual purification, citing the
Jewish Mikvah – a deep pool in which
women traditionally immerse prior
to marriage and which can also mark
moments of transition or transformation.
In Reconnecting with Eros and Rivers of
Dwelling the female character appears
suspended blissfully in water alongside
a barely visible man. Part Harper, she
is also a hybrid of stylised references
including Munch’s Madonna (1894-5),
and the sensual, tragic Pre Raphaelite
sisterhood (can you immerse a British
woman in a river and escape Ophelia,
with all her associations with the tragic
and erotic?)
Like the statuesque figure standing
apart in Paula Rego’s The Dance (1988)
Harper’s blonde woman often performs
as an intermediary between the painting
and the space beyond. In both The
Loss of Eros and The Watch Tower,
her direct gaze invites us into the
theatre of action, to become part of an
unfolding drama.
Achelous and Suda are not lovers, but
a character and his author: the shapeshifting
river god of ancient Greece
and a Byzantine encyclopaedia named
for the writer Soudas. Harper aligns
herself with a tradition of mystical
and unreal riverscapes, from Classical
antiquity to the emotionally turbulent,
colour-saturated paintings of Marianne
von Werefkin, Gabriele Münter and the
Blue Rider group. Purifying, reflecting,
supporting, the river acts as a boundary
to the intimate world of the paintings,
but it is also an emblem of continuity
and endurance.
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Eternally Roiling
acrylic on canvas, 180 x 210 cm | 71 x 83 in
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The Rivers of Dwelling
acrylic on canvas, 180 x 220 cm | 71 x 87 in
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Reconnecting With Eros
acrylic on canvas, 180 x 230 cm | 71 x 91 in
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Immersion
acrylic on canvas, 180 x 170 cm | 71 x 67 in
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The Shell of the Sacred Water
acrylic on canvas, 180 x 130 cm | 71 x 51 in
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Born From the Churning of the Ocean
acrylic on canvas, 76 x 56 cm | 30 x 22 in
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Rebecca Harper in Conversation with Hettie Judah
Hettie Judah: Did this series of paintings
emerge quite distinctly from another body
of work? Spellbind Reflecting looks like a
transitional work into this new series: the
blonde female figure is present, but she’s
more human, less other worldly.
Rebecca Harper: Yes, she is more human.
Spellbind Reflecting was made in summer
2020, along with What You Wished and
Wished Away with the three figures
teetering on the edge of the river, floating
paper boats. They were catalysts for this
series: they started to address self-imposed
ritual and consolation as a marker for
beginnings and endings when dealing with
change and loss.
Hettie Judah: It feels like this series of
paintings came to with a strong core of
themes already in place.
Rebecca Harper: My work tends to manifest
as a reflection of my environment, of the
psychological locations that I inhabit and
those that inhabit me. As if I was staging a
play, I knew early on that I would explore
a cast of familiar characters that would
rotate around the outskirts of my childhood
home in Old Isleworth, where I was locked
down with my family and my partner.
The location would be the set for and the
parameters of my paintings.
I saw it as an opportunity to examine
a period of rapid change, when dealing
with the challenges of loss, grief, and
turbulence, through the uncertain and
the unsettling. I had been thinking about
Freud’s ideas of the great undercurrents
of life being hopelessly locked in a state
of battle, with opposing forces at play.
The idea that what gives us existence and
meaning in life doesn’t happen without
all of life’s polarities: emotion and the
life source that fuels us comes from
strength from vulnerability, life from
death, dark from light and so on.
I’m always striving to play with
polarities in my paintings, that tension is
what drives many of my decisions in
the making.
Hettie Judah: Water plays a role in almost
all of these paintings: it’s a constant
presence in Old Isleworth, which is on the
Thames, but does the water have symbolic
qualities as well?
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Rebecca Harper: The river location is
important because it’s symbolic of home.
The title ‘The Waters of Dwelling’ carries
references to the rain, the Mikvah 1 , the womb,
the ritual of water that helps to cleanse,
heal and purify the body, and through
this it connects us to ourselves, others, to
life, to earth. So the water has become
symbolic of rebirth, lifecycles, courage,
power, truth, strength and spirituality.
The mood of the weather has played such
a huge part in all of these paintings
symbolically and is suggestive of events
playing out. In this series of water based
paintings, on a macro level we see rivers
flow, clouds rain, and rainwater dissipate
and accommodate us and other objects,
and on a micro level we see tears fall,
water slip through our fingers, and run
through our thighs. The idea being that
one who lives in accordance with nature
does not go against the way of things.
Hettie Judah: And the water performs
as a supportive substance. In The Rivers
of Dwelling and Reconnecting with Eros
there’s a sense that the figures are lifted
and carried by the water.
Rebecca Harper: I’ve been thinking
about our acts of effortless surrender to
the natural cycles of the world. We are
reminded that the water accommodates
us, we are supported, we are not resisted,
it sustains us, cleanses us, and we are
weightless to it.
Much like in the ideas of the Tao in
Chinese philosophy, the route of water
explores alignment with the rhythms of the
elements both within and outside the body.
The Rivers of Dwelling is about immersion
for healing: Reconnecting with Eros is
very much about the ebb and flow, of both
loosing and finding the self again.
Hettie Judah: Can you talk me through the
characters that appear in the paintings?
Rebecca Harper: There is a recurring
cast of characters who move around often
in my work. I never see the characters as
portraits as such, more like actors that
play a role, filling in for particular people
on stage. This big blonde-haired lady has
become a kind of guiding spirit of myself:
she represents polarities of vulnerability
and strength. She’s a stronger me: in a
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time of uncertainty, she’s quite reliable
and she turns up again and again when
I need her. There’s also the actor playing
the character of my partner who was with
my family during the lockdown period:
he’s present and witness to all of this. And
there are some that touch upon other family
members, my brother and my mother.
a constant dialogue throughout with these
particular artists.
Hettie Judah: Objects that seem laden
with symbolism accompany the characters:
the big trapped spider in Catch; doubled
swans in The Watch Tower and Achelous
and Suda; rainbows and gridded patterns.
Hettie Judah: The blonde woman seems
to draw together elements from different
characters through art history: she’s
stylised and looks slightly unreal. What
other paintings or artists have you been
looking to?
Rebecca Harper: I think, like the river
that I’ve seen most days, everything I look
at enough seems to seep into my work. For
that reason [J.M.W.] Turner’s sketchbooks
of this part of the river have been so
interesting. I’ve been looking at [Edvard]
Munch a lot, mostly for his sense of
melancholy and depictions of loss and grief.
Munch’s questioning and awkwardness has
found its way into these paintings. And
his Madonna [1894-5] has become a figure
in the paintings Reconnecting with Eros.
In a way she’s not human anymore, I see
her as a spirit, she’s quite ethereal, quite
Ophelia-like too. I have a beautiful book
of [Claude] Monet’s Water Lilies, which
has been out in my studio. There has been
Rebecca Harper: They all have secondary
meanings. The spider in Catch represents
an undercurrent creeping in, moments of
being witness to something more sinister.
In The Shell of the Sacred Water the shell
is associated with death and rebirth. In
Achelous and Suda you find the couple on
a balcony under a rainbow, which refers
indiscreetly to Covid, and silver linings.
The recurring motifs, like crosses or stars
are formally a way of thinking about
colour and moving the eye around the
image: they’re the reflections of the sun
hitting the water, but they’re also about
looking for something more spiritual.
Hettie Judah: A heightened sense of
boundaries was such a powerful
phenomenon of this period: of the home
and of the self, and staying within those
boundaries to be safe. The Watch Tower
feels like a moment of standing guard
against invasion from the outside world.
I was interested that you’ve used this
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framing of the window with the cross
shaped wrought-iron pattern in Achelous
and Suda, so you see the world beyond
through that grid.
Rebecca Harper: There are boundaries,
perimeters, safety nets, particularly in The
Watch Tower where the figures holding
binoculars huddle on the lookout in an
imaginary tree house fortress, like a form of
surveillance. There are also resin security
cameras placed throughout the show.
I spent so much of lockdown looking
out of that balcony onto the river. I feel
incredibly lucky to have had that view.
But that wrought iron star motif on the
balcony, you’re right, has become the grid
over all the river paintings, it’s almost like
the stars are about protection as well.
Hettie Judah: A lot of radiant light
goes through these paintings – it’s a
little psychedelic, but also intensifies their
spiritual aspect, like light through stained
glass, or the visionary pictures of William
Blake. You have gravitated towards a very
stylised colour palette.
is certainly a manifestation of the inner
and outer world.
Hettie Judah: Mourning and loss also run
through these works – What you Wished
and Wished Away recalls the performance
of an elegiac act. There’s also a painting
in the series, which looks down to a coffin.
Grief can be such a difficult subject –
giving painted expression to an absence or
loss – how did you go about addressing it?
Rebecca Harper: As many people have,
I’ve myself been dealing with various
types of loss in my life lately, consequently
I’ve been reflecting, and viewing the
world in a way I hadn’t previously. This
body of work during lockdown became
much more inward-looking as our worlds
grew smaller. Through loss and grief,
the search for meaning and the need for
solace and reconnecting with myself grew
greater than ever. So the reoccurring
blond figure, the guiding spirit of
me, is a reminder of the cycles of life,
strength and rebirth: she is still very
present and helps to carry the load.
Rebecca Harper: Unconsciously there has
been an intense saturation in the palette.
I had been thinking about [Marc] Chagall
and Blake too at points, where the colour
1 An immersion bath of natural water
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I See You Everywhere, in the Stars, in the River
metal, flowers, wood, resin, paper, acrylic, 110 x 73 cm | 43 x 29 in
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The Wondering Owl, A Collection of Birth, Good Fortune and Resurrection
acrylic on canvas, 30 x 20 cm | 12 x 8 in
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Search
acrylic on canvas, 100 x 80 cm | 39 x 31 in
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The Catch
acrylic on canvas, 150 x 110 cm | 59 x 43 in
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Catch
acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 cm | 15 x 12 in
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To m
acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 cm | 12 x 12 in
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I Tried to be the Glue
acrylic on canvas, 180 x 140 cm | 71 x 55 in
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Achelous & Suda
acrylic on canvas, 170 x 210 cm | 67 x 83 in
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The River of Woe
acrylic on canvas, 120 x 90 cm | 47 x 35 in
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We May Sink and Settle on the Waves, The Sea Will Drum in My Ears
acrylic on canvas, 60 x 50 cm | 24 x 20 in
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Everything Falls in a Tremendous Shower, Dissolving Me
acrylic on canvas, 60 x 50 cm | 24 x 20 in
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What You Wished & Wished Away
acrylic on canvas, 180 x 210 cm | 71 x 83 in
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Surveillance From the Watch Tower 1-4
resin, 15 x 15 x 25 cm | 6 x 6 x x 10 in
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I Am Made and Remade Continuously
wood (ed 3) | bronze (ed 3), 48 x 150 x 57 cm | 19 x 59 x 22 in
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“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through
it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over
rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are
timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of
the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”
Norman Maclean, ‘A River Runs Through it and Other Stories’
Even Amidst Fierce Flames, The Golden Lotus Can Be Planted
wood, clay, wax, candles, acrylic, paper, resin, flowers, 30 x 30 x 45 cm | 12 x 12 x 18 in
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Selected Biography
Rebecca Harper was born in London
in 1989, where she continues to live
and work.
She studied at UWE Bristol then the
Royal Drawing School followed by
Turps Art School (Postgraduate’s).
Harper was Artist in Residence at
The Santozium Museum, Santorini, in
summer 2019, and Artist in Residence
for the Ryder Project Space at A.P.T
Studios, Deptford in 2018-19 before
becoming a studio and committee
Member in 2019. She was winner of the
ACS Studio Prize in 2018.
Chameleon, her debut solo show at
Anima Mundi met with great acclaim
including a review in the FT by
Jackie Wullshlager.
Most recently Rebecca was selected for
The John Moore’s Painting Prize 2021,
and previously selected for Bloomberg
New Contemporaries in 2018 at South
London Gallery.
Other curated shows include Huxley
Parlour, Public Gallery, The Royal
Academy Summer Show, Christies
London and New York, Flowers Gallery,
Paul Stolper Gallery, Turps Art Gallery
and Arusha Gallery.
Her work is on long term display
in the Albright Collection at Maddox
Street Club in London curated by
Beth Greenacre and at the Santozeum
Museum in Santorini. Harper is
represented in many public and private
collections internationally including
the Ullens and the Royal Collections.

Published by Anima Mundi to coincide with Rebecca Haper ‘The Waters of Dwelling’
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