The ATW was delighted to collaborate with leading Australian artist Brent Harris in 2012, translating his painting No. 22 into a tapestry entitled Rome.

Brent Harris is renowned for producing works of great emotional intensity and striking graphic quality. The work on which this tapestry is based is from a series of works created with charcoal and gouache on board. These brightly coloured, almost expressionistic paintings of intimate scale, were heavily influenced by the artist’s three-month residency at the Australia Council Studio at The British School in Rome in 2009. They have been extensively worked and reworked, as the artist adds and subtracts from them in equal measure, causing forms to appear and reappear as he works to a final conclusion.

No. 22 was chosen following discussions between Harris and ATW weaver Sue Batten, who felt it was particularly well suited for a tapestry. One challenge that Batten faced was capturing the subtlety of colour shifts in the painting. Another challenge was the scale—the tapestry is more than ten times the size of the original painting. Although collaboration is always an important part of the artistic process at the Workshop, this tapestry involved a particularly strong partnership between weaver and designing artist. Harris has noted how the process of creating a tapestry led him to see his work with new eyes, and even noticed elements of the painting that he was not previously aware of.

Brent Harris is represented by Tolarno Gallery in Melbourne.