ATLANTA - August, 2022
The WADDI Art Gallery announces the exhibition opening of
HARRY UNDERWOOD: OUTDOOR WORSHIP
EXHIBITION DATES: September 10 - October 29, 2022
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, September 10, 5pm - 8pm
GALLERY HOURS: Thursday - Saturday, 11am - 5pm + by appointment
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION:
"These plywood monuments render true life episodes in real colors. Fortified and analogous to the habitat of terrestrial builders." - excerpt of text from the painting "Garden Maze"
"Outdoor Worship is a collection of paintings I've worked on for the last six months while coping with my mother's illness. When I'm not painting I am playing outdoors or visiting with her. I'm very pleased that these paintings have more plants depicted in them than before. If you visit a museum you'll notice that there are people who paint horrors. I'm not one of them. I want to escape horror. If existence is a dream then let it be one. Dreams require landscapes and landscapes should have plants. I think what I'm doing will improve. I've been doing this for twenty years very independently and satisfied." - Harry Underwood, 2022
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Harry Underwood is an American outsider artist born in 1969 in Miami and raised in the rural "Redlands" farming area near Homestead, Florida. After being uprooted by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, he lived in New Orleans and Austin before settling in Nashville. The son of a carpenter, he learned how to draw at a young age and taught himself to paint. He cleaned motel swimming pools, bussed tables and worked in the construction industry until 2005, painting in his spare time and selling his works on weekends at a Tennessee antique mall.
Eventually, Harry found himself working long nights in the studio, obsessed with creating his evocative, text-based paintings. He began turning up late for his day job and he knew that his calling was to be a full-time working artist. It was around that time that he met the British gallerist Henry Boxer, who began showing his work at the Outsider Art Fair in New York City. Harry's paintings now adorn many celebrity and private collections and are exhibited in galleries across the US and abroad.
ABOUT THE WADDI:
The WADDI is a purposefully imagined art gallery and private venue on the edge of the historic Inman Park and Old Fourth Ward neighborhoods. Constructed in 1930 as an engine repair shop for the railroad, it was repurposed in 2014 as studio space for Atlanta artists Fahamu Pecou and Eben Dunn. A tragic fire gutted the interior in 2018 and the WADDI was repaired and reincarnated yet again. Veteran Atlanta gallerist Shawn Vinson was recruited as curator and director, bringing his roster of local and internationally recognized artists to Inman Park/O4W.
The WADDI Art Gallery announces the exhibition opening of
HARRY UNDERWOOD: OUTDOOR WORSHIP
EXHIBITION DATES: September 10 - October 29, 2022
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, September 10, 5pm - 8pm
GALLERY HOURS: Thursday - Saturday, 11am - 5pm + by appointment
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION:
"These plywood monuments render true life episodes in real colors. Fortified and analogous to the habitat of terrestrial builders." - excerpt of text from the painting "Garden Maze"
"Outdoor Worship is a collection of paintings I've worked on for the last six months while coping with my mother's illness. When I'm not painting I am playing outdoors or visiting with her. I'm very pleased that these paintings have more plants depicted in them than before. If you visit a museum you'll notice that there are people who paint horrors. I'm not one of them. I want to escape horror. If existence is a dream then let it be one. Dreams require landscapes and landscapes should have plants. I think what I'm doing will improve. I've been doing this for twenty years very independently and satisfied." - Harry Underwood, 2022
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Harry Underwood is an American outsider artist born in 1969 in Miami and raised in the rural "Redlands" farming area near Homestead, Florida. After being uprooted by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, he lived in New Orleans and Austin before settling in Nashville. The son of a carpenter, he learned how to draw at a young age and taught himself to paint. He cleaned motel swimming pools, bussed tables and worked in the construction industry until 2005, painting in his spare time and selling his works on weekends at a Tennessee antique mall.
Eventually, Harry found himself working long nights in the studio, obsessed with creating his evocative, text-based paintings. He began turning up late for his day job and he knew that his calling was to be a full-time working artist. It was around that time that he met the British gallerist Henry Boxer, who began showing his work at the Outsider Art Fair in New York City. Harry's paintings now adorn many celebrity and private collections and are exhibited in galleries across the US and abroad.
ABOUT THE WADDI:
The WADDI is a purposefully imagined art gallery and private venue on the edge of the historic Inman Park and Old Fourth Ward neighborhoods. Constructed in 1930 as an engine repair shop for the railroad, it was repurposed in 2014 as studio space for Atlanta artists Fahamu Pecou and Eben Dunn. A tragic fire gutted the interior in 2018 and the WADDI was repaired and reincarnated yet again. Veteran Atlanta gallerist Shawn Vinson was recruited as curator and director, bringing his roster of local and internationally recognized artists to Inman Park/O4W.
