Introducing | Jan Harrison Receives Inaugural Recharge Foundation Fellowship for New Surrealist Art

$5,000 award created for painters living in the U.S. and U.S. Territories who are working in the New Surrealist style.

The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) has announced Jan Harrison as the first-ever recipient of its Recharge Foundation Fellowship for New Surrealist Art. The $5,000 award is supported by funding granted to NYFA by the Gu Family of The Recharge Foundation, a private non-profit organization that aims to promote cross-cultural preservation and create dialogues around visual and jewelry art. Harrison, who lives in Kingston, NY, is a painter and sculptor whose work involves empathy with the animal nature and animal/human interface as it relates to the collective psyche. Since 1979, her art has been connected with the philosophy of deep ecology and is focused on the vulnerability of endangered species.

“We’re thrilled to recognize Jan Harrison with the inaugural Recharge Foundation Fellowship, and are thankful to the Gu Family for their support of individual artists,” said Michael L. Royce, Executive Director, NYFA. “Harrison’s work, while rooted in Surrealist tradition, speaks very much to the present as we navigate complex relationships with nature and our own human struggles to survive. We hope that this award acknowledges her outstanding work and furthers her explorations in the New Surrealist style.”

In Harrison’s work, animals relate to the world within an inner landscape. In her personal and universal myth there is purity, strength, and wisdom in animal nature—an innate state of being compared to our industrialized, human-based society. She also speaks and sings in Animal Tongues, which she has performed in conjunction with her visual art. Her work is included in numerous public and private collections and has been shown in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally including Animal.Anima.Animus., which toured to Pori Contemporary Art Museum, Finland; Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Holland; Winnipeg Art Gallery, Canada; and MoMA PS1, New York.

Harrison is the recipient of six grants and fellowships, and has been the subject of many essays and reviews including a chapter in In The Making: Creative Options for Contemporary Art, edited by Linda Weintraub and published by D.A.P. in 2003. Arcana Mundi, a monograph, was published by Station Hill Press in 2001. In 2020, she’ll have a solo exhibition of installation and paintings with a performance of speaking/singing in Animal Tongues at 11 Jane Street Art Center in Saugerties, NY.

“I am deeply honored to be the first recipient of the Recharge Foundation Fellowship for New Surrealist Art. I feel that it is occurring as a result of a lifetime of work, making sacrifices, taking risks to be both strong and vulnerable, perseverance, and being true to my vision,” said Harrison. “I appreciate this fellowship, which will help me to further my work having to do with the animal nature and the psyche,” she added.

Lorin Gu, Founding Partner of Recharge Capital and a member of NYFA’s Board of Trustees, said of the award: “Harrison’s work is both entrancing and prescient. We’re excited to help support her artistic practice through the Recharge Foundation Fellowship, and look forward to seeing more of Harrison’s work in the future.”

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Images: Jan Harrison, BALANCE, 2015, Photo Credit: Nancy Donskoj; Jan Harrison, FOUNDLING, 2015, Photo Credit: Nancy Donskoj; and Jan Harrison, Photo Credit: Alan Baer