Our Exclusive Interview with Jennifer Leigh Harrison a Multidisciplinary Artist, Psychotherapist, and Social Worker Based in Seattle
Q: Are you a full-time artist and if not, what is your profession?
JLH: I am a professional painter and a psychotherapist with a private practice specializing in trauma and addiction, and a social worker at the Department of Veteran's Affairs where I operate as a Suicide Prevention specialist. I have been working in the mental health field for over 25 years, where my career started off answering crisis line calls, accompanying women who had been sexually assaulted to hospitals for biological testing, and managing a shelter for women experiencing intimate partner violence. I have come to understand my painting as an important and essential outlet and balance to my clinical work. I'm not sure how I did one without the other for so long.
Q: What importance do you place on being a female in the arts?
JLH: This is such an important question and one I often hear women saying we don't talk enough about. This is an answer I don't really feel like stepping lightly into, so I'll dive right in! It is well known women are underrepresented in the arts. I see my presence and participation is important and also a constant experiment on how women gain access to and receive treatment in the arts. In 2019, a large-scale study examining diversity in museum settings found 85% of artists being represented were white and 87% were men. Honestly, that is shocking given all the extremely talented female artists in the field. In the 1980s the Guerrilla Girls critized MoMa for their "International Retrospective of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture" meant to showcase the greatest contemporary artists. Out of 169 of those artists, only 13 of them were women. That is less than 8%. I was reading a recent online post about Helen Frankethaler (1928-2011), a great abstract artist, highlighting her decades of contribution to the field. In the comments section, a man wrote that she was not an artist, that she merely climbed the social ladder by marrying Motherwell, and that her lack of study made her unqualified in the arts. This white male identified as a professor of the arts, and for me his commentary only signified an example how the underrepresentation of women is perpetuated in the arts. Women have more difficulty accessing systems that would boost their representation and sales. In 2022, the online platform Artsy reported that work by women accounted for less than 9.8% in global auction sales. I think it is important not only to talk about our underrepresentation but also how we as women consider ourselves and each other in the arts. Recently, a successful business woman tried to negotiate me down on a painting. While this is not unusual, she wanted to buy the painting for less than half the price. The painting was already priced on the low end. Had I given her the painting at her asked price, I would have profited 2% of the actual value of the painting, which would never make painting an affordable profession. I explained to her that not only was my pricing fair and representational of my level of work as endorsed by many peers and gallery owners, but it was also essential that women hold boundaries around the value of their art; to not do this is a discredit to women. This woman unfortunately seemed insulted and persisted in wanting to purchase my painting at a lower price, even though she clearly could afford to pay triple the price. This ironically happened when our local newspaper put out an article about how artists in Seattle are not making enough to live, which places the cultural vitality of our city at risk. It stood out to me that the examples she chose were of other women. I saw this conundrum as not only a problem with the buyer but with the representation of female art. I think as women we must consider how we've internalized our own feelings and thoughts about female artists and the support we give, but also female artists' responsibility in pricing their art at value to rightly appreciate what we do. In this situation it was not a comfortable boundary to keep because I too felt hurt and insulted. It's an example of how we must consider our own internalized beliefs about women, as women. As my artist friend says, "when one artist undermines their work, all artists suffer from it." My hope is that as we raise consciousness about these issues, we will want to elevate women in the arts. I have a strong desire to elevate women in the arts and am constantly trying to connect my female colleagues to opportunities in the art world. I think considering a world without art is a fruitful reflection. Turn all of the art around or cover it with sheets for a day and see how you feel.
Q: What was your most recent exhibit about?
JLH: My current exhibit "Hystèrie: Against Architectures of Confinement" is on view at Gallery AXIS in Seattle's prestigious Pioneer Square Arts District until November 5th. This is a powerful and personal show that examines how French neurologist Jean Martin Charcot's staged theatre for observing hysteria in the 19th century influenced negative stereotypes of women well into modern day. I think it's an important time to be evaluating how women in places of power are perceived, and how we respect the role of the feminine in changing power dynamics toward more inclusivity of our very diverse world. This body of work provides visual reflection on "hysteria" as a form of social control and as a traumatic bodily response to systemic harm. It considers paths of healing and transformation inherent in the rewilding of not only our bodies, our associations with one another, but the land we occupy. The paintings contain my own form of sublimated rage in response to "hysteria" and a practice of how the feminine becomes part of the balance towards inclusivity and wholeness.
Q: What are you currently working on?
JLH: My upcoming solo exhibit "House of Self: A Collection" will be at the M. Rosetta Hunter Art Gallery November 14th - January 25th, 2025. This show will be a continuation of exploring the fragmentation and integration of psyche in visual form. As a trauma therapist, I work a lot with individual parts of self that have become fragmented or cut off in effort to cope with difficult situations, borrowing from what I have been trained to do as a somatic therapist and from theories like Internal Family Systems and attachment-based approaches. There is a universal collective housed in us all, and there are the particular ways our individual psyches are more or less in union. The images, full of movement, are embodied states of being that consider how disconnection and reconnection are primitive acts of healing that are restorative when allowed full expression, but also translatable to more global systems of body and land restoration.
Q: How do your themes get communicated visually in your work?
JLH: There is a lot of movement in my images, and movement is essential to change-making and transcending systems that no longer serve. I work almost entirely on the floor primarily with acrylic paint and heavy boards. It is a full body process because the boards I work with are often large and sometimes too big to fully access without tools to reach central areas. I layer paintings over paintings and then scrape back those layers to reclaim the original image but also to create an entirely new image. This is a very physical process and because I work intuitively there is often a creative crisis that occurs before the image becomes transformed to its final state. Usually that transformation is unknown and part of the process. I do not use paintbrushes, but instead work with plastics like brushes or combs, knives, metal scrapers, razors, wood and ceramic tools and sometimes electric sanders to drag and remove paint on the surface. The boards can handle a lot of physical force, and in most of my images there is a violence that has occurred in the image, but the image often with first impression is one that is playful, light or even serene. These two co-existing together are demonstrative of the complexity of the human condition and the importance of highlighting not just our socialized ways of being, but also our more primitive states that are very much part of our survival, and our ability to thrive. There is also an intentional messiness in my work that leaves the textures and the field of vision quite organic in nature, and comments on the reality that life too is messy.
Q: What do you see in your future as far as painting is concerned?
JLH: I am in a constant state of transition with my work and every show I have energizes me to take something to a new or different level. Lately, the more I paint, the more I seem to blur the lines between visual expression and activism, which is not surprising given my work in the mental health field. Social workers tend to operate on micro (clinical individual work) and/or macro (community, systems, policy) levels of change making, and I see my macro interest in changing systems to be bleeding into my art and my desire to find more provocative ways to do this. It is true that with the level of escapism and materialism we have in our society, having an element of surprise or waking a person up from their social slumber is indicated. There is a lot of overt, direct female activism out there, and there is also the opportunity to alert someone in an unexpected way if they walk off the street to view some art. I've had a lot of people say to me at recent shows "this woke something up in me" or "this made me cry" which tells me I am doing something that resonates with people out there. I think that is the power of working in embodied states while creating-- we are connected together in our archetypal and primitive forms and communicating on that level goes deeper in general. It nurtures a connection.
So right now, I see a future that allows me to become more authentic in my work. Abstract painting for me is always a process of getting out of my head, and getting into by body, and dropping expectations. So going deeper with that pushes new doors to open. As a somatic therapist and an artist working with embodiment, I'm also moving toward performance art and using the physical body as a form of communication. I am very interested in the parallels between body and land and what can be communicated in that exchange of ideas.
Most definitely, I see visual art as a spiritual experience that inspires spontaneity. It moves something deeper inside of us that we need to connect to as a way of understanding or remembering the interconnectedness in us all. If I can contribute in any way to that, I'm moving in the right direction.
Q: What is one word of advice you can offer to young women who want to reach your level of success?
JLH: Last week during my art opening, a very skilled artist came over to me and wanted to know all the secrets of how I'd gotten to where I was. Looking at their work in a moment like that could have easily roused feelings of imposter syndrome because their work was so good. In order to answer their question, I had to understand what they were doing differently from me, because there was no reason why they would not be showing up to the same level or better given their work. What set us apart was I was pursuing exhibits, and they were not, and when I asked why they were not, they said they were "not there yet" to which I replied "where's there? I'm not there either. This is a vehicle to there, wherever there is." Movement is a big key to success, to keep moving. And if you've stopped moving because of a creative block or a bit of an interruption in life, then the key is to find a way to move again, even if the movement is miniscule. It builds on itself.
I meet so many highly gifted artists that call themselves "closet artists" --and I can relate-- for decades I called myself a "dabbler" or "someone who plays around with" and would not even give myself the label "artist". I supervise mental health clinicians in my field and so many of them are afraid they will fail if they take their career to the next level-- even when there is truly no evidence for that; on the contrary what they're aspiring to do is often right in line with their goals, and reachable. Yet, they are in their own way. There are not only glass ceilings that we encounter as women, but women have especially been socialized to internalize their own ceilings and bar themselves from taking the next step, or even considering it. Even if failure is the next step.
So, I say: Own what is yours (your value) and take your passion seriously. Understand that if you want to get to the next level of your dreams, rejection is a right of passage. Collect your rejections like a dog does bones. I don't know too many success stories that don't come with a ton of rejection. I may be batting 3 yes's and 97 no's out of 100. This is part of what people mean when they say "I worked hard to get here. This wasn't handed to me." I love what my musician friend reminds me of: "While everyone was out partying in high school, I was home with my fingers bleeding from playing too much guitar. I earned my right to be here, and to be recognized for it." More often, what sets highly successful people apart from the rest is their determination to keep going despite all odds, and to work at improving what they are doing. We fully take on the challenge and "suit up" accordingly. We get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Q: Can you tell our audience one of your most memorable moments of your career?
JLH: In this day and age, our careers as women are often multifaceted and may have many different chapters. For me the memorable moments are not necessarily the times when I succeeded most, but rather they are the times when I learned the most or maybe even failed. During the swell of hurricane devastations in 2005, I founded and organized a charitable fundraiser that gifted a substantial amount of money from the community to people in need in a very short period of time. I was young in my 20s and had this very I belief that the sports community I was part of would certainly want to jump in and organize this with me—in fact, I was pretty certain they’d take my ideas and run with them. I was very emotional over what I was seeing on TV and felt helpless in the face of human suffering. When the idea was pitched to the organization, they shot it down immediately with added comments like “that’s what churches are for” and “leave your political agenda outside of our sports league”. I was dumbfounded and in tears, as this was my sole community to turn to at the time. I thought “what in the world does politics have to do with helping people?” I felt so strongly about our humanity, I chose to ignore the rejection. I found an attorney and a number of other passionate individuals in the league that wanted to get on board, and once we launched our campaign, the turnout was incredible. Lots of people wanted to participate and to help, including local businesses. But it was another moment of not shying in the face of rejection and not believing a few people in positions of power to be the true voice of the whole group. For me this was a crisis in humanity, and a social experiment of being reassured that people do at the end of the day want to be there for each other. As a social worker today, this is entirely obvious to me, but at the time I felt disheartened and confused about the world and learned that in my own persistence to stay true to my heart, I found others completely allied and ready to go above and beyond for the mission.
Humans are pack animals in the sense that we tend to be conformists. When that fundraising idea was pitched to my social community of over 1000 very active people, one person aggressively shot it down and others supported them in their place of power and opinion. That was a good learning moment for me in checking in with a deeper part of myself that knew this person was not necessarily speaking on everyone’s behalf. We have to trust our own instincts when we feel led to do something different and pursue our vision in the face of adversity.
Q: Which woman inspires you and why?
JLH: “One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.” – Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama was pretty vocal during key times of my early career development as a woman and remains someone I deeply admire and appreciate. She is very graceful in how she communicates with adversity, and yet she does it with strength, intelligence and humility which makes her identifiable. She has always struck me as someone deeply poised in her own values and spiritual direction. Her quotes stay with me. As though she understands her steps are greater than herself, she communicates with dignity, power, assertion, and love. Like an archetypal good mother, she models loving kindness. I often use the phrase "firm but loving" when we talk in therapy about setting healthy boundaries with others, communicating one's needs, and I think Michelle demonstrates that. I think we all have good and bad qualities about ourselves, which is an oversimplified statement, but when it comes to people inspiring us, we are often attracted to the gifts in ourselves that are waiting to be activated and shared with the world.
Q: After high school, where did you feel your career path would take you?
JLH: I did some cool things in high school, but I was also a troubled teen and in a number of ways considered unlikely to succeed. At least this is what I was told, which was like gasoline to the fire! I did not take my early education seriously and had the fortune of dialing it in and passing. I think this is so important to share because I hear teens say, "nothing can or will ever change". In the clinical world, we call that a "distorted belief" even if it comes with a lot of lived misfortune. If there's one example of something changing for the better, then that statement immediately is untrue and worth contesting. People can and do change. If I did not believe this, I would never have chosen the career I did. One of my closest childhood friends who swore they hated school and would not ever go back now has two masters, a PhD and just accepted a teaching position at one of the most prestigious schools in the country where they are quite passionate about academia. In the face of my own odds, I went on to graduate magna cum laude with honors in two degrees (Psychology and English) and this sort of rising gave me a lot of momentum to not stand down in the face of a "no" as I moved into adulthood. When I pitched graduating in 4 years with two degrees, I was told this would be difficult, and likely impossible. Again, it is so worth it to identify and push against our own internal constraints as much as the ones placed on us externally. I had internalized a sense of failure from a young age that in many respects came out of a culture that gave the message to girls that we were not important and had little to contribute. We had been taught to downplay or dismiss our strengths. I have found it uplifting to find other women in society who model the opposite of these false beliefs-- who remind us that if they can do it, so can we. They are here showing us the way and as we fumble to find our own path, we can use their leadership as examples of how to be. There are hundreds of these women available for inspiration and in times of uncertainty, it is important to look to them for guidance and demonstration.
Q: Can you tell us how you manage your work life balance?
JLH: I'd be lying if I said it was always perfectly in balance. It is not. My clinical work can be unpredictable and demanding, and so can these art exhibitions that are all-encompassing. The ongoing lesson for me is how to manage setbacks and stressors, get rest after times of high demand, and know when I've hit a wall that requires me to rest regardless. What's also been important is finding a life partner that wants to support me in my strengths and lift me up when I am down-- we really are never meant to be victorious alone, and it is never true that we alone got ourselves to the level of success we've become. Every bit of the way, someone has given us a break, lifted us up, believed in us when we struggled to believe in ourselves, given us a hand, pushed us along in ways that made all the difference. When we are doing well, we get to return that favor in a moment or a time. As for outlets, I really enjoy being outdoors, eating delicious meals, going on long exploratory walks, jogging, dancing, singing, hearing live music, traveling and most importantly being completely ridiculous and laughing a lot with those I love. I'm extremely introverted and need a lot of recharges after big events. I need time to process what is going on around me. I think with balance, it's important to know yourself and not try to be someone you're not.
Q: What's your advice for women in male-dominated fields?
JLH: After graduate school in clinical social work, I was hired as an addictions and trauma therapist at a mental health clinic that primarily served marginalized individuals; they hired me to help start their focus on addictions work in the clinic and ultimately asked me to provide therapy with their most complex cases. I loved the clinical work, but the work environment itself was toxic and I was barely making enough income to pay the bills. In my annual review, I was told I was the highest performing clinician in the organization. With my permission they were utilizing my own system of care standards to train staff in suicide prevention. And yet after several years I had not received a raise. One day a male coworker I trusted came to my office and said that he didn't know how to tell me this, but he wanted me to know he had received two raises since the time we were both hired for the same position with the same level of experience, and that he didn't realize the disparity until I shared with him my frustration about the barely livable wage and lack of raise I was experiencing. I was in my own naivete shocked, but also grateful he had told me. I think it is often a knee jerk reaction to assume we are being treated fairly, and hard to swallow when we learn differently. We still assume that in these modern times this can't be happening, that certainly there are laws keeping this from being the case, or at the very least we trust those around us are treating us fairly. I gathered up the courage to request a meeting with my supervisor, and when that generated nothing, I asked for a meeting with the president of the company. They arranged a meeting for me with the vice president. I sat down in his office, trembling, and told him I was aware my male peer who had been at the company for the same amount of time as me had been given raises, even though I was told I was outperforming him. The male vice president became very stern and rigid, told me that was none of my business, as if he wanted me to know I was treading on thin ice, and then he told me he did not owe me an explanation. I was again in shock, and he excused me from his office. I filled out a complaint with a bunch of government papers that resulted in nothing other than the pressure to pay an attorney money I did not have to pursue a case. I chose in that very young and inexperienced moment to do the one thing I knew how to do: value my worth, even if they were not going to. That day I submitted my application to another organization who hired me months later and doubled my income. The organization I moved to also practiced a more transparent and equitable treatment of men and women in the profession. I landed myself in a work environment where I felt the men treated and valued me and took me seriously. One thing that kills me is there are still really gifted clinicians at that clinic who never left-- when I would run into them, they would say they feared the next step would end in failure. So many stay in their miserable situation without allowing themselves the possibility that it could be so much better, and this again has to do with our own internalized constraints. The moral of the story here is don't stay in toxic situations, know when to get out.
As a woman in a predominantly female profession that has more male than female leadership, I do think it is essential to find one's voice and to speak up about the inequalities we face. I recently watched a female peer get fired for doing this very thing; but she reasoned in the aftermath that the company did her a favor in that she no longer works in this toxic environment. She still struggled immensely with shame. As a therapist who works with many women in male dominated professions, it is essential to find our allies and to discern between toxic and nontoxic relationships-- who understands the hierarchy and who is looking the other way or directly contributing to it. And by the way, the corroboration of toxicity is not and never has been gender specific. We all have a duty to recognize inequalities and separate ourselves from what is feeding that unfair system. So many tech women I work with either find the people who support their upward movement, or they move on to a place where they are supported. And fortunately, there are male dominated fields that are consciously trying to be inclusive of women ranging from how they treat them to how they promote them. Studies have shown that women who are assertive are perceived negatively when their male counterparts who assert the same way are perceived positively, but there's a zinger follow up to these studies. Men who work on raising their own consciousness and understand the importance of women in roles of leadership tend to value female assertion. All to say, look for the places where you are valued.
Five Things About Jennifer Leigh Harrison
1. What’s your favorite thing to do in your free time?
I really love cuddling with my husband; it rejuvenates and revitalizes me to have that connection of love and understanding.
2. What’s your big passion?
Raising consciousness to address systems of power and abuse that negatively impact marginalized groups of people, as well as people of privilege. When I was in graduate school, I took this class by a professor who had been teaching in academia for decades and was well admired and respected. I was thrilled to be in the class, but midway through the course I began to see he was using old ways of speaking about pathology and referring to others as "schizophrenics" and "bipolars". When I tried to respectfully challenge him, he shot me down in class. When I pushed my agenda again after finding his language intolerable, he treated me like I was crazy and dismissed me from class. I left humiliated and in tears. Minutes later I found myself surrounded by classmates who were thanking me for speaking up when they didn't know how to. After a couple of weeks of silence, I recovered and rallied. I ended up writing my thesis on postmodern perspectives of mental health discourse and how the ways we describe others can have damaging impacts, particularly in that labeling them as their diagnosis makes it seem permanent, and therefore hopeless. A person is way more than their diagnosis, so to call them by their diagnosis dismisses all the other things they are and carries a permanence on their person of being pathologized. Labels are powerful. Language is powerful. It is very different from saying "a person with a diagnosis of schizophrenia" or "a person experiencing psychosis". I took my concerns to the student board and to faculty, and this was around fortunately around the time the American Psychological Association was also addressing language in the field. It was also a time when one of our great modern pioneers in the field of psychology came forward to discuss her own mental health struggles. Dr. Marcia Linehan known for creating a very powerful and highly utilized treatment modality called Dialectical Behavioral Therapy right here in Seattle had spoken out in the NYTimes. I protested to the student board that mental health was not a binary of us and them, that that was a hierarchy of power, when in fact many in the mental health field also face mental health struggles at some point in their life. The conversation was received, a panel discussion was held that was not very fruitful, and ultimately, I felt my concerns had fallen on deaf ears because there was no immediate action. Years later, I was supervising an intern from the same graduate program. We were in a clinical meeting and a psychiatrist spoke of their patient as "a schizophrenic". At that moment, my intern courageously spoke up and said "would you mind saying person with schizophrenia? I find that way of speaking about them to be demoralizing and not inclusive of their whole being." The psychiatrist gracefully nodded her head in silence. I was dumbfounded and also completely impressed with my intern's bold and direct approach. Later in our supervision hour, I asked her how she arrived at those thoughts, and she said "oh we learned that in our program. We are taught to speak about people respectfully. It's one of the rules of class." I found myself in tears after our meeting, realizing that the requests I'd made had not only been taken into consideration, but ultimately agreed upon and mandated. Change is sometimes slow and steady, but I do believe if we really have the best interest of our fellow humans in mind, there is a resonance that ultimately settles and solidifies into a foundation that is way more wholesome than the rocky ground we were standing on.
3. What is your favorite game or sport to watch and play?
It's a tie between women's soccer and women's ultimate frisbee. Probably because I played both sports and love to see women killing it on the field. In high school, my twin sister and I played first-year girls soccer was offered as a sport in our region. I was a midfielder getting the ball up the line to my sister to score many of her goals. She was fast and furious and in the game before state our senior year, she was badly injured by a foul from the other team where minutes before the incident, their coach was overheard saying "do whatever you have to do to take that girl out"-- when I heard a guttural cry I had never heard come out of my sister, I reacted primitively and ended up with the first red card given to a girl in the region. I was banned from playing the state match and slapped with an article in the local newspaper. I thought the Catholic school I attended was not going to graduate me! Fortunately, when I showed up for graduation mass rehearsal the sister holding mass looked me in the eyes before handing me my wafer and said "I would have done the same thing!" We were passionate about sports; both ran in junior Olympics. In my 20s I played briefly on a national women's ultimate team before moving to an area where females did not get the same respect. Both soccer and ultimate require a lot of field sense, and I love watching the decisions these powerful women make in times of intensity. I love watching women kick ass in general.
4. Would you rather cook or order in?
My husband who is also an artist (composer, multi-instrumentalist, teacher) is an excellent cook. There's a joke in our family where we often ask while eating a meal he has made: would you rather have this that was prepared at home, or would you have rather gone out to eat? The answer is almost always emphatically THIS! I love watching him in the kitchen because he is so passionate and serious when he cooks-- there is something very true about food tasting that much better when it is made with love for the ones you love.
5. What was your favorite subject in school?
English literature-- specifically the classics. The classics were more resonant as history lessons than history itself because it placed characters in war and postwar environments and we got to really consider what was driving their decisions and their psychology. I started writing poetry when I was 12 or 13, and once talked my English teacher into letting me submit a very long poem in place of a reflective essay. I think the poem was a reflection on Grapes of Wrath. I was moved by the hardship and devastation of migrant workers and the greed that impacted them, but also the sense of unity that rose up in the face of struggle. Of course, the books that impact us the most are the ones that get banned or burned by some group of people, and this was no different. I went on to major in English in my undergraduate studies where the writings of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Charlotte Bronte, Jean Rhys and Zora Neal Hurston, to name a few, altered my understanding of women's place in society and what I might do to be part of empowering them. A lot of that passion gets housed in my clinical work with individuals now, but as an artist there are many flights of freedom still waiting for lift off.