In these works, Sara Richman Harris (1921-2016) shares her impressions, insights, emotions, and a fascination with buildings and place.
A 1940s watercolor of her parents New Hampshire guesthouse –which welcomed visiting artists, intellectuals and other visitors portrays fondness, joy, and, possibly, a sense of the financial precariousness her family was facing.
Another watercolor, of a woman standing on a porch, probably in 1940’s Chicago, in muted browns, grays, greens and reds, seems to convey with compassion the decay and despair of poverty. 
A watercolor of the Chicago skyline in subtle grays, greens and pinks shows the city at dusk.
In a 1950s oil painting of an old residential building on Clinton Avenue in Albany, NY, Sara used a palette knife to roughly lay on brown, green and pinkish tones –thus revealing beauty and strength in a structure others might simply see as rundo
wn.
A cheerier pastel of the same dwelling features undulating walls—perhaps a prescient or futuristic vision of architecture to come. A watercolor provides an even more freeform vision of the dwelling.
Another Albany building:
A watercolor of Cape Cod painted during a family visit to the Fishers’ cottage–link to commentary Stephen Fisher of Prague and Andrew Fisher III of New Jersey.
A farmhouse on a on a hill…
In the 1960s and 70s, Sara moved into more fantastical, even ghostly forms. In one painting, figures surround in what may be a red hospital building– reminiscent of work by Edvard Munch–possibly after a visit to the Munch Museum in Norway, in 1962, while on a professional trip to study facilities for the aged.
A blue, black and yellow geometric abstract of what may be a building, and black, red and white ink drawings, show Sara’s interest in structure.
Some works seem to convey a mix of certainty and uncertainty—their contrasting shapes, colors and forms highlighting the beauty that Sara found in life.
–Anita M. Harris
