Harry Naar – Paintings

Glenside, Pa. – Harry I. Naar, of Old Chester Rd., Gladstone, N.J., lecturer in fine arts at Beaver College, will hold a one-man show of recent paintings at Beaver College, Easton and Church Rds., Glenside, from February 18 through March 8 in the Art Gallery of the Atwood Library. The opening reception will be held on Wednesday, February 18 from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. and is open to the public. 

A graduate of the Philadelphia College of Art, Mr. Naar received his master of fine arts degree from Indiana University (Ind.).

In 1967 he was awarded the Aspen Painting Award from the Philadelphia College of Art and in 1968 received a fellowship at Indiana University. 

During his independent study in Paris, France in 1970, Mr. Naar studied with the French painter, Jean Helion. 

He has exhibited at the Indianapolis Museum of Art; Corcoran Gallery, Washington D.C.; The Canton Art Institute; New Jersey State Art Museum and the Hunterdon Art Center. 

Mr. Naar is a member of the College Arts Association of America. 

1976 BEAVER NEWS
“Naar to display seashell paintings in Atwood” by Paula Oram

Harry Naar, a new addition to the art faculty, will display his seashell paintings in an exhibit in the Atwood Gallery. The opening of his show is on February 18, from 4:30 until 6 p.m. The show will run through March 8. 

Mr. Naar’s medium is oil paints on canvas. Most of the paintings are still lives of seashells. He recounted the story behind his keen interest in shells. A few years ago while visiting Florida, he found some shells walking down the beach, “I realized I had never really observed shells,” he said. 

He picked some up, borrowed others from friends, and bought water colors. Naar went back to the house, arranged them on a table, and started painting them in water colors. “From there,” he said, “I developed oil paintings which have been my preoccupation since.”

Naar is most concerned with forms, color, direction and shapes and their interrelationships. The paintings are based on abstract qualities in representational shapes. Each object is painted and repainted, so that it becomes familiar to him. “Every time I paint it, it becomes a new object again. I try to experience the object as if I’ve never seen it before,” he explained. 

The artist employs two tools in his work. Naar develops the painting through drawings of the objects individually and together. He then builds up a larger drawing but allows for change, for, as he said, “the drawings do not confine me.” Secondly, he makes up his own environments. For example, he will pin blue material to a wall and paint the background that way. 

Famous masters of art the painter admires are Piero della Francesca, Ingres, Courbet, Balthus and Derain. In fact, the painting on the poster advertising his show is in homage to Derain. 

Except for two paintings, none of the works in the present show have been exhibited before. His previous shows include “Art From New Jersey” at the Trenton State Museum, the American Federation of Art Traveling Drawing Show, a three man show at Indiana University and Drew University Printmaking Show. In the last show, he did a print of a shell. 

Mr. Naar has had a great deal of training previous to coming to Beaver. He received his B.F.A. at Philadelphia College of Art. He received his masters degree at Indiana University in Bloomington on a fellowship. His study in painting continued in France for a year with painter Jean Helion, who influenced Naar’s artistic theory but not his actual painting technique. 

Mr. Naar has also had teaching experience. Previous to Beaver he taught at the Princeton Art Association, Gill St. Bernard’s Private School and Middlesex County College, where he still teaches on a part-time basis. 

1976 BEAVER NEWS
“Naar displays seashell art” by Maxine Reynolds

My first impression of Harry Naar’s paintings was that they are highly representational. The majority of the paintings are of shells in a still life composition. However, the artist has captured the beauty of their natural setting through his choice of seascape colors. The basic composition of Mr. Naar’s paintings also shows a representational interpretation. The harmony between the tables on which the shells sit and the background is created through a traditional approach to balance. 

This balancing of emphasis between them is made clear through some of the paintings’ titles: “Still Life – Shells on Table with Blue-grey Wall” and “Still Life – Large Table with Blue Wall.” The representational qualities of Naar’s work includes his correct use of perspective and commonplace point of view. The observer is made to feel that he is looking directly at a table in somebody’s hall. The artist’s attention to accurate representation of surface texture is evident in his masterful portrayal of highly polished table tops. His shells all give the viewer a sense of true gravity, for they sit realistically and firmly on the tables. 

In addition to the shell-still lifes, Naar’s exhibit includes two drawings of women, an oil painting of a landscape and a portrait of a woman. To the casual visitor they can only appear as unrelated to the rest of the collection. 

But I urge the visitor to go to the Atwood Art Gallery to look more closely. In this showing there is truly “more than meets the eye.” On my second visit to the gallery, I looked more carefully at Harry Naar’s work. I saw that many of the still lifes which I perceived to be full of shells actually were often dominated by non-shell objects. The titles of the paintings reflect this emphasis; for example “Still Life – Green Tablecloth With Hat” and “Still Life – Shells With Milk Pitcher.”

In my earlier visit to the exhibition my perceptions had been only the forms of the objects, not what the objects represented. The lines and planes of the objects on the tables all have a similar quality of “shellness.” This quality is achieved through attention of the abstract shapes of shells. The artist has represented these abstractions in his depiction of other elements within the composition. Pitchers, bowls, vases, eggplants and butternut squash, and the shadows cast on the backdrop, all reflect the essence of shell form. 

The paintings in this exhibit, dated 1974 through 1975, show a subtle change in the artist’s style. Line becomes stronger and colors bolder. There is a pronounced exaggeration of the repetition of the abstraction of shells. 

“Shells with Figure,” an unfinished oil begun this year is an arresting if not aesthetically pleasing example of this move towards the abstract. In this painting, Mr. Naar continues his fascination with shells through repetition of their form in the contorted figure of a woman. Her position is unnatural and artificial in contrast to the flowing form of the shell. This is symbolic of the shell’s removal from its natural setting. The shell is symbolic of the womb, and so woman is the natural extension of its abstraction. Thus the two abstractions are interrelated through symbolism. 

This understanding makes the inclusion of the two figure drawings of women, the landscape and the woman’s portrait less intrusive. Their addition to the exhibit serves as a natural extension of the womb – woman – fertility motif. Is this motif the product of the reviewer’s or the artist’s imagination? I urge you to visit the exhibit, on display in the Atwood Gallery through March 8, and allow your own perceptions to be your guide.