Stephen Harby is an architect, educator and watercolorist. Educated at Yale, He was associated with the late Charles Moore’s architectural practices for eighteen years, where he directed a series of civic and campus projects. He currently maintains his own practice in Santa Monica and is a Visiting Lecturer at the Yale School of Architecture where he directs the school’s program in Rome since 2002.  He also conceives and leads cultural and artistic tours for small select groups to exotic destinations all over the world.

Mr. Harby is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions which include the Gabriel Prize, a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony, and the Rome Prize in Architecture at the American Academy. As a watercolorist he travels and sketches extensively and has exhibited his work widely. His work and teaching was the subject of a feature article in the publication American Artist in May of 2009.

My work in the medium of watercolor began when I was an architect with the addiction to travel long and often. These travels were a quest for what I came to see as the essence of architecture: an understanding of how a highly sophisticated and organized armature can give focus, order, and meaning to the experience of a place, and indeed to our existence as human beings. The elements of this armature—which include scale, proportion, color, light, and meaning—I found to be best experienced and understood through the extended contact with them gained through sketching and painting in watercolor.

When one is obliged to remain in one spot for longer than the snap of a shutter, sketching or painting with patience and concentration, one gains a sense of total immersion, not only visually, but through the sounds, smells, and tastes that a prolonged stay in these favorite places makes part of the experience.

Artin           Beebe           Eck           Harby          Purves          Yudell