WILD CARD

Perhaps best known on prints and greetings cards, the work of American artist Charley Harper broke the mould with his stylish, simplified animal images

What he was doing, particularly at the time he started doing it, was pretty radical,” says Matt Distel, the exhibitions director at The Carnegie, a gallery in Cincinnati, about American artist Charley Harper. “If you put him in the wildlife art tradition, he’s absolutely insane.” Charley Harper’s career spans six decades, beginning in the late 1940s, and includes, at a best guess, 5,500 original works. Ladybirds, rabbits, otters, koalas, mice, elephants, hermit crabs, spiders, zebras - and just about every species of bird populate this sprawling oeuvre. To see the natural world through Harper’s eyes is to revel in the purity of colour, form and balance. He’s thinking about form and shape, and animating with minimal detail, to bring creatures to life. For many years, Cincinnati-based Harper was not well known in…

You're reading a preview of

The Simple Things (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 2024

DiscountMags is a licensed distributor (not a publisher) of the above content and Publication through Zinio LLC. Accordingly, we have no editorial control over the Publications. Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers or other information or content expressed or made available by third parties, including those made in Publications offered on our website, are those of the respective author(s) or publisher(s) and not of DiscountMags. DiscountMags does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, truthfulness, or usefulness of all or any portion of any publication or any services or offers made by third parties, nor will we be liable for any loss or damage caused by your reliance on information contained in any Publication, or your use of services offered, or your acceptance of any offers made through the Service or the Publications. For content removal requests, please contact Zinio.