Krista Harris Born in Roanoke, Virginia, Krista Harris now lives in southwest Colorado. She earned a BFA in painting from East Carolina University. A full time modernist painter rooted in the abstract expressionist tradition, Harris creates elegantly composed and delicately balanced paintings. Shapes and line appear to morph in and out of focus, colors shift like seasons, and subtle imagery whispers beneath the surface. She begins each work with lines and marks that she works back and forth into the surface and develops with gel mediums. She then lays in passages of color which set the tone of the work and builds up the surface with acrylic and other mixed media. Her gestural painting technique demands much from her both physically and emotionally. As an intuitive painter, she allows the paint to dictate the composition. Each step of the process remains as integral as the application of paint and mark including reading and researching, stretching canvases, mixing new colors, searching for new tools, and experimenting with methods. Interested in the naturally abstract elements of the environment, she aims to represent and reassemble those moments of distilled light, intense color, and scratching, rustling sounds she finds in the wilderness. Her work references place, both real and imagined. She says she works under the influence of experience, memory, and imagination. Her final paintings she likens to a kaleidoscope, a blurry postcard, or reconstructed map. She says, “A lifelong case of wanderlust has left me with a visual scrapbook of sights and sounds, even smells and bits of dialogue which seem to sneak into my work. I don’t intentionally set out to recreate a scene and I’m often surprised to see them. It’s rarely even a single location but bits and pieces jumbled together.” Harris see the benefits of ambiguity to her work and practice. She says, “Risk and uncertainty are an artist’s friend, and I try to keep the painting open to all possibilities, deviations, and directions...Taking a wrong or unexpected direction is often more productive than getting things right… Working back and forth between organic and architectural elements, patterns and textures, tangles of marks is the process that keeps me engaged and the sense of mystery alive and well.” Harris’ work is collected nationally and internationally and is included in the permanent holdings of the Duke Memorial Cancer Center, Northern Trust Bank, and Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman Island. She has participated in international art fairs including SOFA New York, Chicago, and Santa Fe as well as Palm Beach International Art Fair.