Cartoonist Hawley Harris, whose consolatory wit poured from his pen during the country’s darkest years, has died. He was 77.
Harris died of complications from diabetes at the Palms nursing home yesterday morning, his son Paul Harris told Stabroek News.
A self-taught artist, Harris worked professionally as a cartoonist for most of his life and contributed to the Mirror, New Nation, the Guyana Chronicle and Stabroek News during the course of his long career. He worked as the editorial cartoonist at Stabroek News from its first year until he put down his pen in 2001 as a result of failing health. He earned many admirers for his astute political observations, which often conveyed sympathy for the trials of the citizenry, while issuing scathing critiques of the authorities presiding over them. No one seemed above lampooning: world leaders like Bill Clinton, international organizations like the IMF and a pageant of local politicians, union bosses and tortured police chiefs all shared space on Harris’ drawing board.
The younger Harris said his father saw his job as putting the ordinary citizen in a better frame of mind. “To deal with the vagaries and rigours of every day life, especially the hard times in Guyana,” he explained. “Some hated it; some loved it, but in the end it was an art form sorely needed by society.”
According to him, the debilitating effects of diabetes took its toll on his father’s ability to perform his daily activities. He experienced numbness of his extremities as well as failing eyesight. He had also been caring for his wife until she died in 2005.
By the time of his retirement Harris had amassed a body of work that stretched back to the 1960s, when he turned a two-week vacation into a lifetime’s vocation. The irony could not have been lost on him that his career was a product of the PPP/PNC conflict. Although Harris had enjoyed drawing at a young age, a strict father guided him to a career in the public service. He was working at the Rice Board when the prevailing political tension ruined his vacation plans and he used his time to draw, eventually leading to his recruitment to the Mirror. There he worked under the editorship of Janet Jagan until the PNC lured him to the New Nation and later the Chronicle. During his career at the state-run Chronicle, Harris created several comic strips, including ‘Soap,’ ‘Soaped Pone,’ ‘Betty and Joe’ as well as ‘Riley.’ As the cartoonist for the newly established Stabroek News in 1986 he gained more freedom and brandished his pen with glee in the ensuing years, producing work that brought him acclaim for its prescience.
Editor of the Stabroek News Anand Persaud yesterday said Harris was peerless in the craft of distilling his own brand of humour from the most humourless of circumstances and depicting it with great clarity and attention to detail. He said Harris was keenly attuned to the nuances of the politics that dominated every-day life and was adept at communicating these. He said no one or subject was spared Harris’ attention and his body of work is a legacy that will live on. He expressed his deepest condolences to Harris’ relatives on behalf of Stabroek News.
In the foreword to the Harris’ retrospective, “100 of My Favourite Cartoons – Hawley Harris,” Stabroek News editor-in-chief David de Caires called the cartoonist a Guyanese institution. He recalled that during his discussions with Martin Carter, Miles Fitzpatrick and John Simon de Freitas on the start up of Stabroek News, retaining Harris as the editorial cartoonist was a point that they all agreed upon without hesitation. “Stabroek News would not have been the same without his work,” de Caires said, adding, “Myself and my colleagues and countless others have derived great pleasure over the years from his often inspired critiques of our politicians and public figures.”
WPA co-leader Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine was shocked and saddened by the news of Harris’ death. He called it a major loss to the local art community. Dr. Roopnaraine, an art critic, profiled Harris in “The Cat Behind the Grin: the High Artfulness of Hawley Harris,” where he observed: “They [the cartoons] have come flowing out of his mind, black lines in white space, week after week, extracting the humour from the most humourless situations, going straight to the single simple truth at the heart of some jumbled confusion, provoking us to another way of seeing, of thinking.” He concluded: Hawley Harris’ output has been prodigious…. his accumulated work over the last 30 years stands as an epic achievement, a vivid documentation, in the simplest forms, of our national and human condition.”
President of the Guyana Press Association (GPA) Denis Chabrol said Harris made a significant contribution to the Guyana’s national dialogue. He said he succeeded in making light of serious issues confronting the country, particularly during difficult times. Chabrol estimated that the cartoons were on par with the daily news coverage in terms of their value to the public. Local illustrator Barrington Braithwaite added that Harris was possibly the greatest Guyanese cartoonist of the 20th century. “Nobody, especially in the field of political satire, exceeded him,” he said.
Harris’ political cartoons never divorced itself from the real lives of the people. His favourite targets seemed to be the utility companies (especially the then named Guyana Electricity Corporation (GEC)), the now defunct Guyana Airways Corporation (GAC) and of course, the Georgetown City Council and a succession of hapless mayors. Mayor Hamilton Green, himself the subject of a number of Harris cartoons, described him as distinguished citizen and greeted the news of his passing with sadness. He said he knew the cartoonist for most of his political life and he felt that his work conveyed the issues with an understanding of the complexities surrounding them. “Through his cartoons he was able to capture the many moods of the people,” Green said, “very often he spoke for the ordinary man, in an eloquent and strong way.” Green added that he never took any of the lampooning personally, recognising that Harris was doing his job as a journalist. “I said cheers for him,” he said, “I remember calling him once and telling him ‘What a naughty boy you are.’”
In addition to a Best Cartoonist Award from the GPA in 1993, Harris was also a recipient of the Cacique Crown of Honour. His cartoons have also been exhibited at the national gallery, Castellani House. More recently, Paul Harris said he has been trying to secure sponsorship to publish a new book collecting some of his father’s older cartoons as well as his own works.
The funeral service for Harris will be held at Merriman’s Funeral Home on Saturday at 9 am.
