Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
The sense that you are seeing everything at once.
Except the subject matter is a bit different.
She used Old Master technique with sharp BDSM inflections and World War II-era kitsch.
Between 2004 and 2011 she had four solo shows that went largely unnoticed.
Curators ignored her, and she has still never been in a biennial.
Painting is my master, Harkness has said, that bitch.
In the front gallery wasThe Arabella Freeman Series.
(Her wifes name is Ara.)
The paintings were generally structured as tableaus set in picturesque landscapes, with figures scattered about.
There were Adonis-like soldiers of different races bathing or having sex in the woods.
Harknesss paintings have much of Homers non-hierarchical narrative: No one thing is privileged over another.
She also likes to paint, in her words, dead lesbians.
There was also a posed nude of Josephine Baker talking on a phone.
In the background was a rendering of Matisses greatJoy of Life.
Painting is something either hyper-beautiful, or decorative gory, Harkness has said.
They are both grotesque in that they are distortions.
