Although the work of Nashville-based artist Harry Underwood is often labeled as "folk art" or "outsider art," that description really just taps the surface. Underwood creates a dream world of retro figures engaging in seemingly joyful and nostalgic activities, yet sometimes his works also contain a hint of sadness.
The artist's latest exhibition, "Outdoor Worship," is currently on view at Inman Park's Waddi Gallery, and Underwood joined "City Lights" senior producer Kim Drobes via Zoom to talk about the work on view.
Interview highlights follow below.
How Underwood conceives his curiously lovely scenes with text:
"I have looked at a lot of postcards and old magazines. I think maybe, the way that my characters are posed reflect that, sort of like old advertising where there isn't a whole lot going on activity-wise, and the people are just in a scene that's a very beautiful scene."
"I had been reading an awful lot in my early twenties. I was really into reading, and I didn't really have the education to become a writer, I didn't think. So looking at other folk art, I noticed that people wrote on their paintings and that that would be a good way to incorporate writing and pictures, put it all together." He later added, "I do a lot of my own thinking there, so it's kind of like having a conversation with myself. It can be very personal. I can think about causes for things and answers to problems. I've always tried to think of a really good line that if some people could hear the right thing, maybe it would cure something."
Using stencils to proliferate pleasing motifs across a body of work:
"I've heard the word composite used a lot with people that do collage work," Underwood said. "So instead of taking just an ordinary photograph and imitating that or using it, you can cut it all apart, and you can make new human bodies out of several parts, and you can create a whole cityscape that way too. But I have used my own photographs. There was a really good one I took once of Birmingham, Alabama, the skyline there, I used it several times."
"I always wanted to think of it as having a formula, where you needed a building, and you need some plants, and you need people, and you can interchange the things. And when you're working with words, too, you can interchange that. You could replace all the words on a painting and say a whole different thing about it. So there's so much flexibility in doing it this way," said Underwood.
An outsider's view of leisure and luxury, against verdant backdrops:
"If you grow up in Florida, you're going to go into the school, or go into work life, and see people around you that are there enjoying their vacations. So you're working and living in a place where people are vacationing, and you're feeling different than that. But I picked up on that and making paintings about that. I've learned to enjoy those kinds of ideas."
"If you look at my art, you can see that I've got a sense of humor, and so when I was doing the early stuff, I didn't know how to really do a very good plant or a palm tree. So I would do these sort of suggestions with the paint that were really, really minimal," Underwood explained. "Recently, I've just gotten more complex about that. I've tried to make it more real, and I've done the tops of these pine trees that are very pointy, and I was always really good at doing tropical sort of palmettos and things like that, cactuses, and now I've kind of just made up my own plants at the moment that look a little bit like broccoli stems."
Harry Underwood's solo exhibition "Outdoor Worship" will be on display at Waddi Gallery in Inman Park through Oct. 29.
