Emily Louise Smith: What does the term folk, or outsider, artist mean to you, and do you define yourself that way?

 

Harry Underwood: I don’t think of that label as having anything to do with my vision or how I approach work each day. I don’t consider myself part of a movement. I wasn’t aware of artists like Darger or Edward Hopper until I was meeting people at my shows and they began telling me I reminded them of all that. I’ve tried to limit my knowledge. I look at what’s in the galleries, and I try to do something else. Persistence is what art is about. The world is designed to wreck your imagination. School, church, wages. Things change, and I don’t expect I’ll be tied to folk art forever. It wouldn’t be bad if I was. A friend recently called it “Americana,” and I kind of like that.

ELS: Stencils of palm trees, bathing beauties, pools, bicycles, and vintage cars recur in your paintings. Why those images? Which typically comes first—scene or penciled text?

HU: I was raised in south Florida, so I’ve leaned toward a sort of vacation atmosphere in my art. The reality is that I’ve cleaned more swimming pools than I actually swam in. My father built office buildings. I swam in canals and fished off bridges. I never believed in the fantasy supplied by travel brochures, but that sort of thing makes a nice backdrop for what I add with the pencils. For a long time the image I made was less important to me than the writing. Right now they’re given equal concern. It’s like a mild surrealism that I tinker with on the canvases. The automobiles I’ve got in pictures like Ligeia look more like candy to me, so perhaps I’m altering something that annoys me, mending reality.

I have to keep reminding myself of this, but it really works to figure out the dominant colors before I make an image. If I can’t see the colors, I should wait. I will write during the image process, or I might have something prepared first. The relationship between text and image seems to connect on its own. Subconscious and double meanings emerge. There is a tuning involved. A lot of self-censorship and editing to form the aesthetic. Some paintings are duds, and some are really very perfect for me, but witnessing the development is what I enjoy.

ELS: The surface cheer and nostalgia in your work seem underscored with longing. How do you define happiness? How is it represented in your paintings?

HU: Happiness is imagining what’s around the corner. I’m terrible at being in the moment. I enjoy believing that there are still possibilities available, and I try to send that message. Painting didn’t happen for me until I was thirty-three years old. That’s when I knew I could do this for a long time without getting bored. I wouldn’t have found it without all of the difficulty I went through.