DIZ HARFORD - ARTIST

BIOGRAPHY

Australian born but set sail to India, Greece, Ireland . Finally settling London . Exhibiting in Australia, Ireland, U.K., U.S.A her work has captured public and private collectors and lovers of art worldwide.

She works in series, personal and political, influenced by world art ,literature, and its' peoples. Buddha and Christ . The human struggle individual and collective. The importance of the spirit of the land and an end to suffering .

An early series , based on James Joyce's "Ulysses" was exhibited in Dublin and later bought by an Irish Joycean scholar and collector and presented to University of Cork. "A Nice Clean Game" used images of cricket to highlight the injustice and oppression of indigenous peoples.

The arenas of boxing and Spanish poet Lorca's bullfighting poem depict the Aceldamas - fields of blood . The aggression of the warlords, still greedy , power hungry and ruthless today. Adam and Eve are expelled from Eden by an angry God and Eve is forever blamed as the temptress daring to question the cage.

In other paintings, graphics and found art we find the lives of women, the feted and the unknown. Salome, Billie Holliday, Marilyn Monroe who " have loved too much", The unknown caged women struggling to be free. There is the joy of love in the Etching series " The Song of Songs".

A current series is based on the flamboyant lover, feted artist, wit and critic of his time- Oscar Wilde's " De Profundis" the autobiographical letter written in Reading Jail to his lover and his descent into the depths of jail and isolation. This includes a triptych on the theme of Dorian Gray, the yearning for youth and fear of age. Yet Wilde is more than a gay icon. Both the depths of De Profundis and the world of Jesus Christ in "The Soul of Man under Socialism " have deeply influenced the artist in her work.