Seventy Years of Painting: Cliff Harmon and Barbara Harmon

Harmon’s painting is based on the color theories promulgated by Joseph Albers, demonstrated in Albers’ series, Homage to the Square. Harmon’s personal technique of flat areas of color of different hues placed side by side visually appear as if modeled. His signature work over the last thirty years, including over 670 landscapes from his Earth Forms series, has been the imaging of “horizon” paintings, depicting in abstract form long vistas of warm desert hues of the Southwest in contrast with the cool hues and greens along llano and laguna.

Sayre’s métier is fantasy, The World of Willderwish, encompassing both a lighthearted atmosphere and the mysteries of ancient bottles, bouquets, and muses in enchanted gardens.  A highly imaginative quality carries over into the paintings from her travels in Europe, the Near East, and Mexico as well as in the portraiture of her friends and neighbors in Taos. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.