Announcing Representation Of April Harrison
April W. Harrison
Mixed-Media Artist and Illustrator | Greenville, South Carolina
Represented by Black Art In America
April W. Harrison is a Greenville, South Carolina–based mixed-media artist and award-winning illustrator whose work gives visual form to faith, family, memory and the sacred dimensions of everyday Black life. Working with acrylic paint, watercolor, pencil, powders, collage, specialty papers, printed fragments and found objects, Harrison builds richly textured surfaces that often begin in abstraction before resolving into elongated figures and intimate scenes. The quilt-like character of her compositions draws directly from the handmade quilts of her grandmothers, connecting material experimentation with intergenerational traditions of care, ingenuity and storytelling.
For Harrison, faith is not simply a subject; it is an organizing principle. Torn papers and recovered fragments become metaphors for lives gathered into divine order, while saturated color and layered glazes evoke grace, healing, self-love and sacred worth. Many of her figures appear with closed eyes, a recurring visual language grounded in the biblical idea of walking by faith rather than sight. Exaggerated hands and enveloping arms emphasize touch, protection and welcome—the human gestures through which love, wisdom and spiritual inheritance pass from one generation to the next.
"Home" By April Harrison
Over more than two decades, Harrison’s work has been presented at the Morris Museum of Art, Hampton University Museum, Spartanburg County Museum of Art, Greenville County Museum of Art and the Romare Bearden Juried Invitational at the Mint Museum, selected by the late artist and scholar David C. Driskell. Her work is held in public collections including Vanderbilt University, Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center, the Atlanta Housing Authority and Erskine University Museum, as well as numerous private collections.
Alongside her studio practice, Harrison has developed a distinguished career as a children’s book illustrator. Her first illustrated picture book, What Is Given from the Heart by Patricia C. McKissack, received the 2020 Coretta Scott King–John Steptoe New Talent Illustrator Award. Harrison later received Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honors for Me and the Boss in 2023 and Go Forth and Tell in 2025. Books featuring her illustrations have also received the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award and a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor, extending her visual language of collage, tenderness and cultural memory to readers across generations.
Illustrated book cover for "Nana Akua Goes To School"
Black Art In America represents April Harrison and is committed to advancing the visibility, scholarship, institutional placement and long-term collecting of her work.
