Tara Harris

My paintings begin with landscape, but rarely end there. I am interested in the space between what we see and what we feel — the inner landscapes shaped by memory, emotion, time and place.

I work intuitively, allowing the painting to develop through a process of layering, scraping back, erasing and rebuilding. I work primarily in oils on wood panel, drawn to the resistance of the surface and the way it allows me to repeatedly uncover and transform what lies beneath. I rarely know exactly where a painting is going when I begin.

Landscape becomes a kind of language. A horizon might suggest distance or longing; a storm can become an emotional state; a small act of growth can speak of resilience. I am drawn to moments when the familiar world becomes slightly strange — when a landscape feels both recognisable and somewhere else entirely.

My practice is rooted in the belief that painting can hold things that are difficult to articulate. Through an intuitive and often instinctive process, I try to create places that invite the viewer to pause, look longer and perhaps find something of their own experience within them.

I came back to painting after more than three decades away from my original art education. In that time, my life moved in very different directions — through teaching, family life, work and the everyday responsibilities that can leave little space for making art.

Returning to painting in 2024 felt less like starting again and more like reconnecting with something that had been waiting for me. I had spent years encouraging other people to be creative; suddenly I was giving myself permission to make work without knowing exactly where it would lead.

Living in Birmingham has also shaped the way I see landscape. I am interested not only in remote or beautiful places, but in overlooked spaces, changing environments and the traces that people leave within them. Nature can push through cracks in the urban landscape; weather changes a familiar view; memory can transform an ordinary place into something almost mythical.

My paintings have grown from this meeting of lived experience and imagination. They are not literal records of places I have visited. They are places remembered, invented and felt — a way of exploring how our inner lives continually alter the landscapes around us.