Lives and works in Manchester (UK)
Tommy Harrison’s work is preoccupied with the process of constructing and collapsing the painted image. Demonstrating a highly sophisticated range of techniques and influences, the artist’s work draws on various painterly traditions from the High Renaissance to the present day. Each work is ultimately concerned with the technical journey that is taken to arrive at a composition, built up through an unfolding process over several months, beginning with geometric forms that lead to a range of possible outcomes before being resolved into dark, mysterious landscapes and uncanny interiors.
Harrison begins by drawing directly onto the canvas using tailor’s chalk, establishing an initial framework for each composition that becomes quickly discarded. Operating without preconceived logic, the process by which images emerge is circuitous, with the artist responding in stages to his own previous marks and gestures until a direction begins to reveal itself. This provides a blueprint, from which nascent formal and figurative imagery emerges, creating a point of tension from which Harrison can continue to build or dismantle with the application of oil paint. Allowing for a kind of ordered spontaneity to guide his process, as opposed to contrived planning, Harrison slowly negotiates a plurality of possible compositional outcomes, working on multiple canvases simultaneously over weeks and months. His paintings are often anchored by a motif or found subject derived from art history and wider visual culture. Cropped bodies, animals, theatrical curtains, ornate patterns, anonymous landscapes or claustrophobic interiors, are appropriated and deployed as pure form, stripped of narrative or didactic function.
Tommy Harrison (b. 1996, Stockport, UK) graduated with an MFA in painting at the Manchester School of Art (2021-23), for which he received in 2020 the Haworth Trust Painting Scholarship. Solo exhibitions include Double Bind, GRIMM, Amsterdam (NL) in 2024; Tone Cluster, GRIMM, New York, NY (US) in 2023 and Frozen Mid-Melt, Pipeline Contemporary, London (UK) in 2022. Harrison’s work has been included in group exhibitions at Huxley-Parlour, London (UK); Chapelle de l’Humanité, Paris (FR); Islington Mill, Salford (UK); Elysium Gallery, Swansea (UK) where he was shortlisted for the Beep International Painting Prize; Bankley Gallery, Manchester (UK); and Holden Gallery, Manchester (UK).
Tommy Harrison
DisplaysApril 10 - May 31, 2025GRIMM 2 Bourdon Street, London (UK)Read moreA Room Hung With Thoughts: British Painting Now
Curated by Tom MortonFebruary 15 - May 11, 2025Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX (US)Read moreSelf-Portraits
April 5 - May 4, 2024GRIMM 54 White St, New York, NY (US)Read moreTommy Harrison
Double BindJanuary 12 - March 2, 2024GRIMM Keizersgracht 241, Amsterdam (NL)Read moreTommy Harrison
Tone ClusterMay 12 - June 30, 2023GRIMM 54 White St, New York, NY (US)Read more
Food for thought at Green Family Art Foundation: What makes British art ‘British’?
A Room Hung With Thoughts: British Painting Now” features 40 works by 40 artists.Benjamin Lima, The Dallas Morning News, March 4, 2025Meet the Ardwick Realists: the new northern soul of British painting
Matthew Holman, Plaster, June 4, 2024Why Do Artists Keep Painting Self-Portraits?
Emily Steers, Artsy, April 23, 2024Next Big Thing: Tommy Harrison
Galerie, November 29, 2023Tommy Harrison Interviewed by Charlotte Eytan
Charlotte Eytan, Bomb Magazine, June 26, 2023Interview with Tommy Harrison
Maddalena Bonato, Émergent Magazine, May 23, 2023
The Green Family Art Foundation presents "A Room Hung With Thoughts: British Painting Now" featuring several GRIMM artists
Curated by Tom Morton January 15, 2025The Green Family Art Foundation is presenting A Room Hung With Thoughts: British Painting Now , curated by Tom Morton, opening on February 15. The...Read moreTommy Harrison joins GRIMM
May 2, 2023GRIMM is pleased to announce the representation of Manchester, UK-based artist Tommy Harrison (b. 1996, Stockport, UK). GRIMM’s first presentation with Harrison will be a...Read more