Exhibition Mine, Pocahontas, Goulds, Florida

Exhibition Mine, Pocahontas, Goulds, Florida

Charley Harper

19 x 24 inches

179

Charley Harper was a Cincinnati-based American Modernist artist. He was best known for his highly stylized wildlife prints, posters and book illustrations. Born in Frenchtown, West Virginia in 1922, Harper’s upbringing on his family farm influenced his work to his last days. He left his farm home to study art at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and won the academy’s first Stephen H. Wilder Traveling Scholarship. While at the academy, and supposedly on the first day, Charley met fellow artist Edie McKee, whom he would marry shortly after graduation in 1947. Charley Harper returned to the Art Academy of Cincinnati as a teacher and also worked for a commercial firm before working on his own. He and his wife worked out of their Roselawn and Finneytown homes, and later, with their only child Brett Harper, formed Harper Studios. During his career, Charles Harper illustrated numerous books, notably The Golden Book of Biology, magazines such as Ford Times, as well as many prints, posters, and other works. In a style he called “minimal realism”, Charley Harper captures the essence of his subjects with the fewest possible visual elements. He contrasted his nature-oriented artwork with the realism of John James Audubon, drawing influence from Cubism, Minimalism, Einsteinian physics and countless other developments in Modern art and science. His style distilled and simplified complex organisms and natural subjects, yet they are often arranged in a complex fashion.

WSPAC - Ford Times Collection

Painting

Watercolor, gouache, ink

Ford Motor Company