Marina Harris

Paintings by Marina Harris, born in Cyprus and currently based in Dubai, bear the legacy of her personal history. Her imagery of seascapes and boats recall her childhood home on the Mediterranean Sea, and her family's displacement when Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974. In oil paintings generally dominated by a single warm color, Marina pairs dreamlike imagery with expressive brush strokes and tones. The combined effects of her artistic style are of a lost past that can only be conjured through a combination of memories and fantasies.
 
Though this imagery of nostalgic longing takes root precisely in Marina’s experience of being rootless, her use of archetypal visual analogies makes her work widely accessible. Recurring motifs such as weathered boats and rocks, broken chains and faint horizons resonate with more universal experiences of displacement. Marina’s paintings testify to the complexity of personal narratives and the immense global forces that redirect them.