About the Artist

Marie Harnett was born in Hertfordshire in 1983, and lives and works in London.

 

Marie Harnett's work is inspired by films. She makes small, intricately detailed pencil drawings which capture fleeting moments of drama, suspense or beauty and, when released from the original context of the film that inspired them, the drawings each tell a story of their own.

 

The source for Marie Harnett’s small-scale drawings are films and for each one she transposes a carefully selected still in precise detail. In doing so, she subverts the very nature and intention of the cinematic process – film frames are not typically intended to be viewed statically or in isolation; they are the constituent parts of a carefully plotted production, edited to effect a desired narrative at a particular pace. By removing them from the context and reworking them as intricate pencil studies, the viewer is forced to focus on every aspect of pose, light and texture – in many cases emphasising subtle nuances which are lost in the film as a whole. Most films scenes begin life as a drawn storyboard – loose renderings around which sequences are interpreted, constructed and shot. Harnett’s intimate drawings extend this creative arc, taking them to a new conclusion.                                                                           

                                                                                                                                                            - text courtesy Alan Cristea Gallery, London, 2014