Profiles - Jeffrey Harris

Television (Full Length Episode) – 1983

Dunedin-based painter Jeffrey Harris is profiled in this episode from an early 80s arts series made for TVNZ. Harris talks about his quest for intensity and impact; and how violence both attracts and repulses him. He also discusses two of his influences at the time — the surrounding landscape (particularly the wilds of Otago Peninsula and Seacliffe, and the older parts of Dunedin) and the photographs, ranging from family portraits to newspaper pictures, that provided the figures that populated his expressionistic works.

A lot of the things that I'm interested in painting are the sort of things that were treated in the Middle Ages by the stages of life and things which aren't sort of evident in twentieth century art.
– Jeffrey Harris