Photo by SC Shekar
As an artist, I have been blessed in living a life of adventure, along with some painful and personal hard knocks, balanced out however by a great deal of artistic freedom and success. I have won, and I have lost, been rewarded with accolades and been laid flat by humility.
The ebb and flow of an artistic career is what has kept me moving forward, despite the challenges, I remain optimistic enough to wish that tomorrow, or even later today, the very time we have yet to experience will be met with great promise and perhaps, a better understanding of our place in the world.
The stories and the experience of adventure are, in equal measures, embedded in my painting. I am a storyteller in visual abstraction, and the work I have and will continue to produce asks those that view it, to engage and to experience it as I have.
Over the decades, my paintings have become my public journal, documenting my inner concerns and my greater environment, outward and on to canvas for all to see. Some get it, some don’t. This is to be expected. But my wish is that my work will move you enough to feel something within yourselves and to think, quietly.
In 1990, I left a potentially lucrative design career behind to pursue a challenging life as a painter. Thirty plus years on, I have not looked back. Taking this challenge on as a young man then, the life I live today is a result of experience such as, the love of land and of home and of lost loved ones gone missing, but always, of great reward.
The many works created throughout the decades has been a reflection of the environment I choose to walk, and I hope you will walk along with me, quietly moving forward, together.
Drew Harris, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
January 2021