A master of line and psychological nuance, Boyd’s figures are engaged in dialogue, dance, and acts of physical endurance—all poignant yet comic commentaries on the human condition. Adlai Stevenson, Eleanor Roosevelt, William Carlos Williams, Gandhi, and other cultural heroes populate Boyd's fluid landscape. Since the mid-80s his work has consistently featured non-idealized aging male figures. Biographically or autobiographically inspired (his father, himself, Adlai Stevenson), yet fictional in result, these figures “all share an awakening clumsiness, as if surprised by gravity, as if remembering a weightless childhood, the childhood of a soap-bubble. But in the gallery, this all changes. There is closure everywhere, and with it grace and a surprisingly idea sort of beauty.” (Tim Porges, Harold Boyd, Old Body: Beginner's Mind, 1999)
Harold Boyd
Untitled #1, 1976
Lithograph
11 x 18 in
