Digital painter Harlan returns to Carmen's Gallery

Friday, Nov. 20, 2009

Click here to enlarge this photo Submitted photo A new digital painting by Stephen Harlan. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story Click here to enlarge this photo Submitted photo Stephen Harlan's digital oil paintings will be showcased at Carmen's Gallery.

Ten years ago, Carmen Sanders was hesitant to display Stephen Harlan's digital oil paintings in her gallery in Solomons Island. "But it was so different," she said, looking at some of the artist's new paintings a few weeks before Saturday's opening reception.

"I said, ‘Well, let's just try it out for a week or two,'" she recalled. "Then it just took off." For example, two of Sanders' customers, a husband and wife who claimed not to like Harlan's nearly neon-bright, nonrepresentational yet hyper-realistic digital paintings the first time they saw them, now own more than 30.

Of course, there are some who think painting with electronic paintbrushes on a computer screen is cheating. In fact, years ago, someone asked Harlan if to paint a tree he simply types the word and presses "enter." Though the short answer to that question is "no" and the long one is too long to describe here in full, suffice it to say that his process takes way longer than a few seconds.

Harlan, in fact, has been developing his technique for three decades — from the genesis of computers being used to create art, graphics and images — and the process has evolved from the basics to the incorporation of computers and programs that allow him to use several platforms simultaneously while customizing his own electronic paintbrushes, he explained to a reporter on the porch behind the gallery.

It all started, though, when Harlan worked as a graphic artist for a company in California. He convinced his boss to buy a "graphics computer" for more than $100,000, and Harlan taught himself how to use it with a manual. Back then, it was all numbers; there were no graphics tablets or paintbrushes.

A guitar player, Harlan designed a Flying V, which he then sent to the owner of the system's manufacturer. The president called it a fraud: He claimed there was no way Harlan could have designed it with the system. Later, the president agreed to give him all the equipment he needed in exchange for the rights to a couple of his images every year.

Usually, Harlan starts with an idea which is translated into a basic pencil sketch. He starts drawing on the computer screen — crudely at first, blocking out colors. Once the perspective is correct, Harlan then begins a slow process of fine-tuning it, a process aided by his ability to zoom in on what might be a three-by-four-foot painting to one-quarter of an inch.

"There are certain schools of thought that if you do not actually put oil on a canvas, then it's not painting," he said. "But I paint just like a traditional artist does, only electronically. ... People have the misconception that the computer does it for you, but it's kind of the opposite. Not only do you have to be able to draw and paint, but you have to make it electronically convert to your image."

The 10 new Harlan pieces in a small, upstairs room in Carmen's Gallery are the latest in the artists' "Water's Edge" series, which, after some years devoted to abstract and Southwestern-inspired works, came to fruition about seven years ago. That's right around the time when Harlan, in his 50s, left the corporate world to pursue art full time, thereby kicking a 17-year habit of commuting to work from his waterside home in Dares Beach to Washington, D.C.

While quitting the corporate world for art, from the sound of it, would seem as good for the soul as it would be bad for the bank account, Harlan has reaped both monetary and existential rewards. He makes about 100 prints of each piece, and the larger ones sell for about $2,000. Put simply, Harlan now earns more than he did in the corporate world; not only that, the last two years have been his best. He is represented in 10 galleries, from Carmel, Calif., to Key West, Fla., but Carmen's Gallery is where he got his start.

"Many, many people who have never collected art come in and see his work and want to buy it," Sanders said. "I think part of it is because it is so precise, and it is hard for them to understand how he can get so much detail." When she fills them in — the painting was created by using a computer — Sanders prepares for a negative reaction that only rarely occurs.

Harlan's primary muses are architecture (there are no people or animals in his paintings), light (how it reflects off water, mirrors or hardwood floors) and, above all, water. He has lived at the edge of it, incidentally, since his youth — in Florida, California, Maryland and now North Carolina — and the scenes he creates, set as they are in unreal yet accessibly exotic locales, seem to synthesize the memories of the many places he has lived.

But Harlan also tries to create new versions of twilight-hour utopia — places he wishes he could visit or live — and it all stems from his imagination. (Harlan uses models or photographs in some cases only to be sure his images are anatomically correct.)

"Whether people like my work or not, it is different," he said. "How many times have you walked into galleries where you just see the same-old, same-old stuff? I think that's what it takes to make it as an artist; you have to be different. And fortunately, I've tapped into an area where people like the work and buy it, so I feel very lucky."

While artists typically go through phases, Harlan believes, in "Water's Edge," he has tapped into a life-sustaining modus operandi. After his wife got a new job last year, they moved to the beach near Wilmington, N.C., where his two daughters have taken up surfing.

They suggested he try a surfing piece, something Harlan had never attempted, and the result is "Carolina Surf Shack," an eye-catching portrait of surfboard racks, long shadows and vivid sand one could swear is photo-realist.

But it's just another made-up place, an idea that became a sketch that became something else in the mind of a digital artist. "It's just a feeling I try to convey," he said. "I don't want to say, ‘Well that's Carolina Beach Avenue South or the North Pier or whatever.' It's just when I think about surfing down there, I think of that."

If you go

Meet artist Stephen Harlan from 6-9 p.m. Nov. 21 at Carmen's Gallery, 14550 Solomons Island Road, Solomons. Call 410-326-2549.