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Gallery 1066 is delighted to have a number of Rolf Harris\'s outstanding 2011 collection on display.
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THE NEW collEcTioN from RolF HARRiS
compRiSES TEN mAgNiFicENT NEW pAiNTiNgS
WHicH HE has pERSoNAlly SElEcTEd FRom his
STudio. RolF TAlkS uS THRougH the TREE-liNEd
cANAlS of AmSTERdAm ANd the vAST plAiNS
of THE AuSTRAliAN ouTbAck, to THE SERENE
WATERWAyS of vENicE ANd the AWE iNSpiRiNg
WildliFE oF the kENyAN buSH, THiS collEcTioN
of vASTly diFFERiNg WoRk SHoWS oFF the
vERSATiliTy, dEpTH and viTAliTy of the WoRk of
THE NATioN’S moST bElovEd ARTiST.
THE STudio collEcTioN 2011
Each print has been reproduced to the highest standard and is individually
signed by Rolf. Then, each piece is immediately numbered as a mark of its authenticity and status as a genuine
collector’s item. The sophisticated, cutting edge techniques used to
create these limited Edition prints give them a remarkable closeness to the original, with the true vibrant colours and superb detail. Each print is then
completed by demontfort with a beautiful hand-crafted frame.
“ Amsterdam morning is a composite from a couple of
photographs i took in Holland. i was doing a programme about Rembrandt
for a bbc1 ‘Rolf on Art’ programme some years ago. in one of these
photographs, a man had just gone past me on a bicycle and i was able
to snatch a shot of him going off into the early morning sun. on the left
hand side there was a canal lined with trees, and on the other side of the
canal were all these buildings drifting off into the blue haze of distance.
on the right of the picture, quite a way away, a man was walking towards
me, almost obliterated by the blinding early morning sunlight. i waited ‘til he
got a bit closer so that i could actually see him properly, almost alongside
a parked bicycle, and i took another shot. by this time of course, the cyclist
was way off in the distance, but i was able to combine the two pictures to
have both the cyclist and the pedestrian big enough to register properly.
The line of cars parked alongside the trees by the edge of the canal, and
the buildings to the right completed the picture. i just loved the way the
whole thing went off into the blue grey distance in my painting, and if you
look closely you’ll realise that the road was constructed of bricks laid in a
herring-bone pattern. i started trying to paint each individual brick but
soon gave up. it was driving me mad! i loved the shine put on the stones
along the sidewalk on the right by the millions of feet over the centuries,
and i particularly loved the bits of sun, bursting from the polished cars and
exploding at the far end of the road. if you look closely, you can almost
smell the dutch coffee aroma wafting out of each doorway.
“
THE STudio collEcTioN 2011
AmSTERdAm moRNiNg
canvas edition of 195 copies Size 24” x 19” framed £795
paper edition of 195 copies Size 20” x 16” framed £695
THE STudio collEcTioN 2011
Wildebeest, as you probably know, is another name for the gnu - wildebeest
is how it’s better known today. For Zebra and Wildebeest i conceived an
idea that it would be nice if everything in Africa, instead of being green, green,
green wherever you looked, might look more exciting if all the grassy areas of a
painting were red. it was a good thought. i painted the zebra and the baby
zebra and the wildebeest in their accurate colours, from a photograph i’d taken
out in Africa, but then, instead of green grass everywhere, i painted brilliantly
red grass. i really rather liked the effect. i hope you do.
“ “
ZEbRA ANd WildEbEEST
canvas edition of 195 copies Size 34” x 16” framed £895
paper edition of 195 copies Size 30” x 14” framed £795
THE STudio collEcTioN 2011
lioness, mother and cub was very much a delightful exercise in
impressionism, trying to get the feeling of that gorgeous calm, relaxed, loving
mother who’s cuddling that little cub in to her. if you look at it, all the different
colours are so close to one another, the greeny-grey of the background creeps
into the brownish reddish colour of the nose of the mother. Then you get little
bits of brilliant light along the top of the eye, nose and ear of the mother and
the brilliant white of the part just under the nose of the lioness and then the part
of the chin with the little dark areas, and it all comes together. it was a painting
that more or less painted itself.
“ “
THE STudio collEcTioN 2011
lioNESS, moTHER ANd cub
canvas edition of 195 copies Size 16” x 16” framed £650
paper edition of 195 copies Size 14” x 14” framed £575
THE STudio collEcTioN 2011
A Sea of grasses, uluru. uluru, formerly known as Ayres Rock, the
mystical aboriginal sacred site, seems to surge up, isolated and magical, from
the very centre of a vast sandy plain. This huge sandstone monolith stands 900
feet high and is about five and a half miles around the base – it is enormous! up
close, it dwarfs we humans into insignificance, and from a distance, its shadows
assume a mantle of incredible soft blue, cast by the haze of the intervening
atmosphere. When the setting sun adds its own amazing red highlights to ‘The
Rock’, as it’s known, this amazing blue creates a wonderful and intricately detailed
contrast to the vibrant orangey-red. Seeing ‘The Rock’ in all its different guises,
it is no wonder that it has been a sacred site since time immemorial.
“ “
A SEA oF gRASSES, uluRu
canvas edition of 195 copies Size 28” x 15” framed £750
paper edition of 195 copies Size 24” x 13” framed £695
limited Edition book of 1,950 inclusive of two limited Edition prints £295
This spectacular retrospective of the life and work of Rolf Harris is available as a signed limited edition of 1950 copies. beautifully encased in a presentation gift box, the book is accompanied by two collectable limited editions signed by the artist. its 260 full colour pages reinforce the huge impact that Rolf has had on the world of art, as an educator, an entertainer, and of course as a major artist in his own right.
THE STudio collEcTioN 2011
dead Flat calm is painted from a big close-up of two rowboats
just sitting motionless, with gentle ripples on the water and a lovely calmness all
around. it gives me a lovely sense of being totally relaxed. i like the reflection of
the brilliant white boat in the foreground on the left. underneath that boat the
reflection in the water paints itself as a sort of dingy yellow ochre colour. With
the boat on the right hand side, you get a back view of the brilliant white back
section, and that’s reflected in the water as a sort of a pale, pale yellow ochre
colour – a slightly strange shaped reflection but that’s because of the ripples in
the water. if you want relaxation, here’s your picture!
“ “
dEAd FlAT cAlm
canvas edition of 195 copies Size 24” x 16” framed £725
paper edition of 195 copies Size 21” x 14” framed £695
THE STudio collEcTioN 2011
gondola in the Rain, venice was a fascinating picture to paint
because you’re trying to get the perspective of everything that’s happening with
this strange shape of the canal which goes round in a series of curves to the left
and then back to the right and the buildings going up and up and gradually
disappearing into the background. Nothing is straight! it was fascinating to
paint all that and to get a feeling of impressionism in the shapes of the wall and
to get the perspective of the lines of bricks running along the wall to show the
way it’s all following the complex shapes and curves of the canal. And then to
see that gondola coming towards you with the man controlling it, standing on
the back platform with the white of the muted sunlight reflected off the platform,
silhouetting his legs. The two customers sitting in the gondola underneath the
umbrella, sheltering from the lightly drizzling rain, are loving the whole experience.
i love the odd spreading ripples created by the lightly falling raindrops in the
right bottom corner of the painting.
“ “
goNdolA iN THE RAiN, vENicE
canvas edition of 195 copies Size 21” x 28” framed £895
paper edition of 195 copies Size 18” x 24” framed £795
THE STudio collEcTioN 2011
Tsavo orphans After mud Wallow is done from a photograph
that i took when we were in kenya. We’d been to daphne Sheldrake’s orphanage
where she raises tiny baby elephants that have been orphaned by poachers
and she brings them back to maturity and gives them a family of other orphaned
elephants and keepers to join. it was wonderful to go out with the young adult
orphans when they went to a mud wallow. The way this was all done was, they
dug a big hole in the red earth and poured gallons and gallons of water into it.
The elephants couldn’t wait to get in amongst it and they all waded about like
naughty little kids, laying down and wallowing and sloshing about. it was just
wonderful to see. And of course the mud painted them all completely orangey-
red. These photographs were taken after they’d come out of that mud wallow
and they were just relaxing. To try to get the feeling of the thickness of the skin of
these elephants, i first of all used hugely thick, dark brown paint to get the shape
of the elephant’s body, and then, using the thin, pointed wooden end of a small
brush, i scratched lines into the thick wet paint to indicate where the wrinkles
were. When that was all thoroughly dry, i was able to paint the elephants
the correct orangey colour and the grooves in the original thick paint helped
indicate the patterns in the leathery skin.
“ “
TSAvo oRpHANS
AFTER mud WAlloW
canvas edition of 195 copies Size 20” x 15” framed £675
paper edition of 195 copies Size 16” x 12” framed £595
THE STudio collEcTioN 2011
The title of this painting, Winter Sunrise, gives you an idea of what
it’s all about. it was painted from a photograph sent to me as a christmas
card, by a dear friend of mine, penny Tweedie. She’d got herself up early
in the morning one freezing cold Winter’s day last year and had taken this
astounding photograph as the sun rose, with the silhouettes of the various
trees against the great mass of greeny-grey trees in the background. in the
foreground you have the darker greeny-grey of shadows on the slightly lighter
colour of the snow. Then once again on top of that you get a much darker
colour pinpointing the edges of the hedge and the little bits of trees and the
trunks covered in ivy and empty of leaves against that orangey sky as the sun
rises. The fascinating thing with penny’s photograph was the intensity of the
sunlight coming from the half orb of the sun on the left hand side, bleaching out
everything around it, even turning the trunks of the trees a vibrant red against
the gleaming white of the sun.
“ “
WiNTER SuNRiSE
canvas edition of 195 copies Size 30” x 18” framed £875
paper edition of 195 copies Size 26” x 16” framed £775
THE STudio collEcTioN 2011
Tall Tiger on the prowl. To try and create the painting i started off
very boldly and very bravely – just sloshed on the colour and tried to get the
central part of the nose and the section above the mouth that orangey-red
colour, then tried to paint the rest of it as it went out in all directions into a
yellow ochre-y sort of colour from that basic nose colour. i had two big brushes
and a lot of very wet oil paint and it was all painted wet on wet on wet, sloshing
on the really dark lines of the patterns on the tiger’s coat with very deep purple.
– i didn’t wait for anything to dry in the initial phase, just painted it all wet and
tried to get the perspective, the proportions and all the lines of the stripes as
they went around the face and across the back. Further off towards the back
of the shoulder going towards the real back of the tiger, you can see that
there’s a certain amount of daylight softening the colour of those dark stripes.
The way that i indicated that was, i didn’t use any blue for the daylight, just a
paler version of the purple i’d used for the dark stripes. i did actually wait for
everything to dry before i carefully painted on all those dramatically contrasting
chunks of white everywhere. What amazing patterns tigers have!
“ “
canvas edition of 195 copies Size 16” x 30” framed £895
paper edition of 195 copies Size 14” x 26” framed £775
TAll TigER oN THE pRoWl
THE STudio collEcTioN 2011
Fishing Felucca, Hot day Egypt is a title that says it all. it was
just wonderful to paint from start to finish. it was from a photograph that i took
when we were in Egypt many years ago. i’ve got so many photographs sitting
there waiting to be painted and this one was tremendous, mainly because of the
fact that it all seemed to be green. Everything was a sort of bluey green except
for the brilliant sunlight and i was fascinated by the fact that the green-ness
of the photograph, somehow seemed to indicate a terrific background heat.
you felt that heat and i think the reason you felt it, was because of the brilliant
sunlight on the top of the mast and along the bit of bamboo holding the sail,
as well as along the edges of the boat and the fierce yellowy-orangey sunlight
on the curve of the sail and the brilliant sunlight on top of the figures. i think
the whole thing created an impression of intense sunlight coming from above,
even though normally you would think to yourself that to get a hot scorching
sunshine effect, you would want to have orangey-reds everywhere. i love the
poor sea-sick fisherman with his head in his hands. He can’t wait to get off the
boat and on to dry land.
“ “
FiSHiNg FEluccA, HoT dAy EgypT
canvas edition of 195 copies Size 26” x 13” framed £725
paper edition of 195 copies Size 24” x 12” framed £695
bronze Sculpture Edition of 595 Size 12” x 10” £995
The sculpture iNTuiTioN was
inspired by Rodin. i got my dear
daughter bindi to pose and
modelled it from her hand in clay
before casting it. i was amazed
when i found out that Rodin has
actually used the same hand twice
but placed it in different positions
in his sculptures like ‘The Secret’
and ‘cathedral Hands’.
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