Richard Harris (b 1954, Devon), has been making environmental sculpture since 1976. While studying at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design, he chose to work outside in a grass courtyard, building structures with found stone and wood. After his studies he spent a year based in a studio on Dartmoor further connecting his work to nature. 

Richard came to prominence as the first resident artist at Grizedale Forest in 1977. The residency provided the unique opportunity to explore specific sites, working with natural materials. His work is of human scale and is concerned with creating gentle acute interaction.  He has returned many times to Grizedale and it remains central to his sculptural practice.

From 1979-81 Richard travelled and explored opportunities in Australia. Very aware of the strong Aboriginal connections to the land, he became resident artist at ‘Birrigai’, an outdoor school and went on to create an earthwork  ‘Hollow Hill’, a deconstruction of a recently made mound, in Melbourne.                                                                     

Returning to the UK Richard was drawn to living in NE England where there was an emerging public art culture. He was based there 1982-94 working on large projects in Gateshead and county Durham. Other commissions at this time, included ‘Passage Paving’ on London’s South Bank, and a residency in Wuppertal, Germany.

Harris has lived in Wales since 1994 and worked widely in different contexts throughout Europe and further afield, in Japan, Korea and Cuba. He is a sculptor and principally a manipulator of delicate impermanence, though often on a very large scale, in rural and urban landscapes. Notably the reimagining of the coast at Llanelli and the creation of  an earthwork at Theydon Bois for the Woodland Trust.  

Harris often works at the interstices of engineering and nature, such as the polished stainless steel poles that elevate the stones for the Olympic sculpture in Weymouth and the precise cutting of the raw slate to create the wing like sculpture for the Senedd in Cardiff. These skilfully echo the surrounding environment and result in a keen awareness and recognition of the place.