Bessie Harvey is one of the artists in:
Faces and Figures in Self-Taught Art
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center
124 Raymond Ave Box 703Poughkeepsie, NY 12604
Till August 31, 2014
About the Show
From Henry Darger’s elaborate paintings of young girls caught in a vicious war to the sacred art of the prolific Reverend Howard Finster and the raw power in Thornton Dial’s turbulent compositions, the work of self-taught artists has achieved unique status in the art world for its compelling expression of emotion and unselfconscious style. The strength of the artwork lies not in its adherence to reality but in its refreshing deviations from it. Included in this exhibition are paintings, drawings, and sculptures by artists who operate without academic training and outside traditional artistic discourse, often using unconventional materials to create works that vary remarkably in style.
When taking the human form as a subject, self-taught artists often express intensely personal visions that open a window onto their imagination. The face—the apex of the human figure—takes on a strange other-worldliness that evokes children’s art, mythology, or pure fantasy. The exhibition features works by Steven Ashby, Henry Darger, Thornton Dial, Howard Finster, Dwight Macintosh, Donald Mitchell, and Inez Nathaniel Walker, among many others.
The exhibition is generously sponsored by the Friends of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Exhibition Fund.
Bessie Harvey
Alcoa, Tennessee
1929 – 1994
God Is the Artist
This is Bessie Harvey, folk artist, so I’m called. I’m really not the artist. God is the artist in my work; nature and insects, they shape my work for me, because they belong to God. I belong to God, and all things belong to God, because it’s in his Word that all things are made to him, that without him there’s not anything made. I know that my art is a peculiar kind of art, but he says that his people are peculiar people and I just want to give all the praise and glory to him for my work. My work is something that tells of love, and he is love, so he let the insects and time and nature go in front and do the work and then he gives me the insight to bring it out. He uses the hands that he gave to me with his spirit in the hands and in the mind and in the heart and just in me, he’s all in me, and he expects me to bring it out, so that I can tell the world today that he is my life and he the artist in my work.
There is a piece that’s called The Poison of the Lying Tongues. He speaks of the tongue so much of being a thing that will cause us to go down in great sorrow, because the tongue has never been tamed. He speaks that all animals and everything in the earth has been tamed by mankind except the tongue, and it cannot be tamed,tongues coming out of the lying mouth, and it’s saying to the world today, that the tongue can’t be tamed. So before you use it to say things that will hurt yourself or someone else, remember that love covers a multitude of faults, and it’s a fault to go around hurting others.
My greatest hope is in my believing and trusting and knowing, from self experience, that truly, God is real. The art is magic, he’s majestic, and the art is from him, so it is magic. But for it to be good for you is to know that Bessie Harvey is not magic, only the one that lives within her, the spirit, is the magic one.
I get the opportunity to say in the work that God loves us all and he is God, regardless of whatever you believe him to be, whatever you believe it to be, it is your God. But there is but one, and that’s the great “I am,” and every one of us use the words “I am,” and the great “I am” has established his love and himself within us, that we be just as we say “I am.”
Photo: William Arnett, 1987