Tony Harris
About the Artist
Tony Harris is known around the art world as a superb sports artist. For the last 25 years, he has been doing work for the NHL, NHLPA, PGA, LPGA and many other elite sports agencies. Before his art career, however, Harris was an athlete during his childhood and college years. He played quarterback in college and had a short stint in a major junior hockey league in Canada. After his athletic career ended, he took up teaching, and when starting to work, he felt like he was back in school, and as a student that was more focused on being outside than being in the classroom, he left that job and took up painting.
He first picked up painting golf courses, as his love for the game blended with his love for art. As it turned out, Toronto, which was his home at the time, residents loved owning a painting of the favorite hole from their favorite course. Harris went from struggling artist to having a steady job with as much work as he wanted. And after ten years of painting golf courses, he moved up into painting NHL players and being under contract with the NHL Players Association. In 2017, Harris was gifted with the chance of celebrating the NHL’s 100th season by painting the NHL’s top 100 players of all time and presenting them to the public.
Harris paints using oil paint on canvas and is known for his portraits of athletes and sports venues. At 53 years old, Harris is still an active artist in the community and is one of the only hockey portrait artists. Harris says that his goal as an artist is to take in the emotion and personality of a subject. As an athlete in college, he believes that the competitiveness he had in college has helped him become the artist he is today
Harris also wants his art to convey the illusion that the subject could literally step out of the canvas at any time. In his portraits, he uses the same dark background behind each subject, as if the lights were turned off and a spotlight was beamed down onto them. He shows each player's unique emotion or personality within each painting, making each and every painting special in its own way.