Will Harris

Willard Harris was a painter who was born in Bloomington, Indiana in 1933 and received his BFA from the John Heron Art School in Indianapolis. After serving two years in the Army, he earned his MFA from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1961. He moved to Buffalo in 1965 to accept a position as an assistant professor teaching painting at UB and in 1979, promoted to full professor. Before this, he worked and exhibited in New York City. Harris’s work features a mix of cubist and abstract landscapes and cityscapes of the Western New York area in a variety of watercolors, acrylics, and oils. He mainly painted areas around Java Lake south of East Aurora, the rolling countryside, and Buffalo’s waterfront.  Harris was also an accomplished glider pilot, and these experiences influenced the splitting of the picture plane combined with straight-on views of his subjects.