Britt Harrison

Photography by Jarid Blue

ARTIST STATEMENT

Britt Harrison is a Brooklyn-based artist and curator originally from North Carolina. Her work considers transitions, temporal shifts, and water's transformative power. Through custom-designed wood panels, ceramics, and installation, Harrison explores the symbolic and spiritual roles of water, its power to cleanse, reshape, and clarify what is felt but not seen.

Water offers a space for transformation. It is the giver of life, a container for ecosystems, and a source of relief. It exists in both the everyday and the sacred. The same element that cools the body can also cleanse the soul. Water's grounding qualities create space to feel, often bringing clarity to complex or difficult emotions.

Growing up in North Carolina, Harrison developed a connection to water—from the Atlantic coastline to inland rivers and lakes. Now based in Brooklyn, she remains drawn to liminal spaces along the shoreline, where land and water meet and time begins to slip. In these moments, vision softens, sunlight crinkles on the skin, and the body becomes more aware of its surroundings. These thresholds offer space to wonder and to dream. Her work reflects this quiet pause, offering a counterpoint to constant thought and inviting moments of stillness and reflection.

Dimensionality is central to Harrison's process. Her panels are custom-designed and CNC-cut into fluid, organic forms that mirror the undulating movement of water. Inspired by sprawling rivers, modest puddles, and serene lakes, these shapes invite the surrounding environment into dialogue. The wall becomes negative space, and shadows extend the work's sense of presence and form.

Many of Harrison's paintings emerge from reflections of water's surface, where the world appears reversed. She draws from fleeting moments in the city, where unexpected reflections interrupt the everyday. Harrison layers soft gradients and repeating patterns that capture the changing light. Her practice embraces abstraction and minimalism, allowing simplicity to open into depth.

Britt Harrison earned her BFA in Painting and BS in Psychology from UNC Wilmington in 2011 and has continued her artistic education through coursework at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and the University of California, Los Angeles. She holds an MPS in the Business of Art and Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Harrison is the Director of under the pale blue, a contemporary gallery in Queens, NY, and the Residency Director for Hidden Hills in Asheville, NC.

Please email me through my contact page for commissions, murals, or other projects.