Artist of the Week: Jennifer Leigh Harrison

Jennifer Leigh Harrison is a Seattle-based artist, psychotherapist and social worker.

Seattle Refined: How long have you been creating? What mediums do you work with?
Harrison: I have enjoyed artistic expression most of my life — poetry, singing, songwriting, academic writing, embodied states of movement, dance — I don’t like to be tied down to one expression as I find many forms to be wonderful ways of conveying ideas, feelings and experiences.

My area of formal training is in creative writing. I am a published poet and have been crafting with words since I was a child. In 2022, I had a deep desire to capture expression without words and at that time began painting seriously as an outsider painter. I took a mentored study class at Gage in 2023, where we discussed ideas and images with a gifted mentor while working independently on our already existing projects. This helped me arrive in taking myself seriously as a painter. Currently, I work mostly with acrylic on wood panels and sometimes oil, wax, charcoal and graphite.

Can you tell us about your artistic process and how the different stages work into it?
I work almost entirely on the floor, which allows me to feel more connected to my work. Painting is a whole-body process for me, and it can be labor intensive, with a lot of pressure and movement on the board. I use metal scrapers, knives, wooden objects, rakes, my hands and floor brushes to move paint. I make a big mess!

I often have more than one large painting going on at once. Something about that feels less confining and literally full of movement — what I am holding off on expressing in one image goes into another, or sometimes both start off very similarly and veer off in completely different directions.

Because much of my imagery gets buried and is later brought back or stays underneath, like a secret, there are many stories housed in one painting. A lot of my method involves scraping back layers. Many of my paintings are captured deconstructed states of another and, therefore, can visually vary greatly in finished form.

Tell us about where your inspiration for your art comes from.
Life! I am naturally very introverted and also perpetually inspired by my internal process. Art of many forms inspire me: dance, movement, spirituality, aesthetic beauty. Also, social issues that involve disruption, chaos, conflict, rebellion — shifting from stuck places, states or illness.

The state of our humanity and the resiliency found in places that come out of suffering is of interest. I am a somatic psychotherapist who specializes in trauma and addiction, and I also work with a specialization in suicide prevention at the VA. I am often intimately involved in the difficult or stuck spaces of others’ lives and their desire to heal or change the situation they are in. The collective energy held in these encounters can also become part of what is embodied in my work.

Do you have a specific “beat” or genre you like best – nature, food, profiles, etc.?
I am an abstract painter who is more lyrical in expression, though I’m not wed to this process. This is both true for my poems as much as my paintings. My images are embodied emotional states that are intuitive, fluctuating and often reveal fragmented states of the psyche or a desire or arrival toward wholeness. My works house many different deconstructed states in one image, which gives them their subtle complexity.

Do you have one piece of art that means more to you or is extremely special to you?
“Reclamation” is a painting with many layers that in its final state of pink has grabbed on to more cherished underpinnings of my feminist philosophy and the taking back of things many of us once rejected in an act of reclaiming power. This reclamation can come in the form of color, which is so powerful, but also disruption of the medium that at the onset appears so peaceful and serene in the image, but in fact is covered with slashes and scars.

“Engagement” is a 48 x 36 repetitive block print of my and my partner’s hands interlocked the day we were engaged. We have it hanging in the kitchen. The texture and layering of what are to me nostalgic colors in the background brings me warmth, a sense of home, and a reminder of things very close to my heart.

What experiences in your life have affected your art the most?
The freedom to improvise and change course is important to me, in life and in expression. Also, I have always been moved by the expression of one art form created out of the experience of another.

I once had a long poem of mine performed by a theatre group. Leading up to the performance, they called me in to discuss the translation of the poem — like much of my art, there were many layers of interpretation. They had me read the poem aloud, which I hesitated to do because I wanted them to have the freedom of their own interpretation and to improvise on this. They gasped as I finished reading it aloud, explaining that they read the poem as having ten different voices, not one as I had created it. Ultimately, this is how they ended up performing the piece, with 10 actors, which I wholeheartedly encouraged! Their interpretation was delightful and moving and also entirely spot-on. This influenced my continuing on with burying a complexity of meaning in my work, versus shying away or simplifying it.

When I was in my undergraduate studies, a way of honoring art day at the university was to have all the art in every building covered up or turned around so that no matter where you went, there was no art to see. I thought a lot about what comes out of an impoverished place, whether it is a space of illness, trauma, mental suffering, or lack of access to basic needs. What stirs inside to counter that absence. What art gets created not only from happy places, but also the dark places we experience.

If we want to see more of your work, where should we go to find it?
“This Mess Is Precious,” my biggest show to date, will be at The Labour Temple in May and June and open to the public during the Belltown Art Walk. This show will address themes of fragmenation, play, struggle, resilience embodied in my clinical work. I will also have a solo show at Miro Tea in Ballard, also in May and June and another solo exhibit at The Good Society in June and July.

You can find me on Instagram @yellowtantrums or learn about upcoming shows or media coverage at my website, jenniferleighharrison.com.

What is next for you? Anything you’re working on right now that you’re really excited about?
I am looking forward to having more shows that have space for my larger pieces. This feels very important to me. Given that I just went public with my paintings this year, there has been a lot of adjusting to the discomfort of putting myself out there in a new way. I just finished my first 9-foot piece and discovered I have a lot of room to grow into taking up that much space. This is a psychological conundrum as much as it is a painter’s dilemma, and it is a fun one to be in. I’m looking forward to more of those challenges. I would also like to get involved with installation/performance art that allows me to incorporate, well, more of what is inside of me that wants to be expressed in the most embodied way possible.

Lastly, how do you take your coffee? (We ask everyone!)
I am one of those fading relics that receives coffee in bed every morning with a smile. My partner is a coffee snob and loves showering me with sweet things. Actually we both are unapologetic coffee snobs and pretty good baristas! We use a Nuova Simonelli Oscar Professional to make our espresso. We are so serious we traveled across the country a couple years back and took our espresso machine with us. It’s the best coffee in Seattle, but please don’t quote me on this!

About ‘Artist of the Week’: This city is packed with artists we love to feature weekly on Seattle Refined! If you have a local artist in mind that you would like to see featured, let us know at hello@seattlerefined.com. And if you’re wondering just what constitutes art, that’s the beauty of it; it’s up to you! See all of our past Artists of the Week in our dedicated section.