Guest Gallery
Primitivism
Harlow Ballard
Artists in Residence
(1 of 5)

Harlow Ballard is deceased. He lived in Columbus, Ohio. He described himself as a late "bloomer," having gone to college late in life to get both a BA and an MBA degree. When he retired from business, he began to devote himself to digital art. He was untrained as an artist and never took art or drawing classes, or if he did, he said, he forgot what he learned. He first worked in Microsoft Paint with a mouse and then in Corel Painter with a Wacom tablet. His art is flat, almost without perspective. He liked storefronts and signs and down-home themes, people going about their ordinary life. The art is folksy, primitive, outsider, not unlike Grandma Moses, who also started out to paint late in life. There is no pretention here or sophistication or striving for effect, only direct feeling. The artist was always himself without apology or defensiveness.