Harry Greene Fine Arts

About the Artist

Harry L. Greene, II was born May 24th, 1942 in Hannibal, Missouri. His father was a physician and his mother was a nurse and an amateur artist. She thought nothing of driving him to St. Louis (2 1/2 hours away) to view art and to take lessons from visiting artists. Greene showed an early interest in art and excelled, winning Helm Art and Scholastic art awards as a teenager. He had a cohort of outstanding artists under the tutelage of Mary Wiehe (M.F.A.), Tom Hall, Ron Powers, and Barbara Ellis being most notable for their talent and achievements. These youngsters created an exciting island of art in their small town.

After high school he left his art to weekends and evenings as he pursued his father's career as a physician. He spent thirty four years learning and practicing medicine, first as a cancer specialist (Sydney Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School), then in Primary Care and Prevention (Univ. of Massachusetts and Univ. of Arizona), and for the last seven years as Chief Executive (staff) Officer of the Massachusetts Medical society, a group of 17,000 Doctors and the publisher of the esteemed New England Journal of Medicine. Greene published and edited or co-edited 5 textbooks on Medicine, four of which are still in current editions, and two on CD-ROM. His favorite aspect of the books was the art and illustrations that brought the dry text to life.

In 2001 he left medicine and took intensive lessons to rekindle his latent art skills, and the Worcester Art Museum school provided abundant mentors: William Griffith (watercolor), Kat O'Connor (oil and acrylic), Ellen Delainais (pastel), and William Lewis (printmaking).

In 2002 he moved to Tucson, Arizona to open his own studio and become a member of The Drawing Studio, an artists' cooperative similar to the Art Students League in New York. At the Drawing Studio he studied with Andrew Rush and Catherine Nash (drawing, printmaking), Ellen Fountain (watercolor), and Brian Freeman (pastel portraiture).

Nearby Phoenix offered the resources of the Scottsdale Artists' School, Ted Nuttall (watercolor portraiture) and Chris Sapir (oil and pastel portraiture). He has also attended courses in drawing at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum Art Institute taught by Catherine Nash (drawing) and Nicholas Wilson (wildlife portraiture).

Greene is currently a member of the Portrait Institute of America (John Howard Sanden), the Southern Arizona Artists' Guild and The Overton Arts Group. His paintings are already in over a hundred homes, and in collections from Maine to Boston, and from California to Hawaii . He is at home capturing both the likeness of a Board Chairman or of a homeless person on the Boardwalk. His work is currently on exhibit at J&R Gallery, 6460 N Oracle Rd, Tucson, AZ and at the Drawing Studio in Tucson, AZ.

He studied with Daniel E. Greene in New Salem, NY during the summer 2004.

Currently he continues to teach his oil portrait classes in Tucson.

He lives with his wife Linda in Oro Valley, Arizona.

Artists Statement: I knew as a young artist the pleasure of getting a likeness when attempting a portrait. That feeling is intensified when one can extend it to other media but add to likeness a sense of the character of the person you are painting. When likeness and character are combined with an artistic rendering that stands on its own aesthetics. one has a work of art that will transcend time and bring joy to viewers for generations.