Harry Lum was born on a ranch 30 miles north-east of San Francisco, California, in 1930. He was the fourth of five sons born to Chinese immigrants. The ranch was approximately 500 acres in size and grew fruit and nuts. The older boys assisted with picking fruit, and later, when Harry was in his teens, he also picked pears as a summer job, recalling how his sweltering experience in the hot sun was primarily reserved for immigrants and for those who were less entitled.
When Harry was three years old, his family moved to San Francisco’s Chinatown, where they lived in two small rooms in a tenement. They only had cold running water, so they boiled water and bathed in a galvanized tub. There was no heat in the winter, and no refrigerator, so perishables were stored on the windowsill. They shared a single bathroom and kitchen with the residents from the entire floor of the building. This cramped, noisy environment, which lacked privacy, made Harry feel ill at ease and shaped his desire to one day live in the quietude of nature.
Because his parents had emigrated while the Chinese Exclusion Act was in force, his father, Mr. Ma, took the name/identity of another man, Mr. Lum, who was returning to China. This is commonly known as being a “paper son”. Harry was an excellent student with a sharp intellect. He claimed it was genetic as the Ma family had been imperial ministers and civil servants for many generations, back to the Tang dynasty. Harry graduated from Lowell High School and enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley.
This was a challenging time as his parents could provide little support outside of bus fare to Berkeley. Recounting how he faced discrimination from landlords refusing to rent to him because of his Chinese descent, eventually, with perseverance, he secured a part-time job to cover tuition and room and board. But still, he struggled to have enough to eat and, on at least one occasion, fainted from hunger. Aside from that, he thrived at Berkeley, making lifelong friends and earning his BA in 1953 and MFA in 1954. As an artist in the Bay Area at the time, he was influenced by Richard Diebenkorn and other Bay Area Figurative painters. Also, in his work are images of political injustices, as he had great empathy towards the plight of others because of his own encounters with discrimination. His love of nature, symbology, and the poetic recounting of his Chinese ancestry were also themes.
Harry was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study in Paris in 1959, after completing his mandatory service in the Army. Harry made countless visits to the Louvre to study and sketch from the great masters, and enriched by his experience, he returned to teach at U.C. Berkeley and the Richmond Art Center (1961 - 1972). In 1972, he was offered a full-time position teaching art at Grossmont College in San Diego, CA.
While at Grossmont, he mentored and provided support to many students. He was generous with his time, and many sought advice on life beyond the classroom. A half hour drive away from his teaching position, he built an open floorplan home with a studio in Harbison Canyon and surrounded it with bamboo and fragrant night blooming jasmine. Relishing the solitude, quiet, and space that he yearned for as a child, he overlooked beautiful vistas and, in his living room window, highlighted the silhouette of a mountain. This mountain often entered the imagery of his work, symbolizing for him the tales and journeys taken by his distant ancestors through the mountain passes of China.
Harry taught at Grossmont until 1995, when he retired and moved to the small Northern California town of Nevada City, where he built another home with a large studio where he lived alone, surrounded by nature and reunited with friends from UC Berkeley. Reminiscent of literati painters of days gone by, immersed in making his art, Harry was also a student of the world, with subscriptions to The New Yorker, Der Spiegel, Le Figaro, Sing Tao Daily, and Scientific American. An audiophile with hundreds of records, sound absorbing walls, and a top-of-the-line stereo system, he played his music loudly, enveloping himself within the sounds of opera, jazz, and classical music. Although he enjoyed his solitude, he often had friends over to dinner for his homemade dumplings and steamed salmon with black beans. Wielding his machete to chop down the underbrush, climbing trees with his chainsaw to cut down the unyielding limbs of trees, and chopping wood logs for the winter to stoke his cast-iron stove, he was a cultured man of the mountains.
Early in his career, Harry exhibited regularly on the West Coast, mounting solo exhibitions at Mills College Art Museum, Oakland; San Jose Museum of Art; San Diego Museum of Art; Richmond Art Center; Grossmont College, El Cajon; Monique Allbeck Gallery; The Berkeley Gallery; and the Dana Reich Gallery, San Francisco. He was also included in many group exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Oakland Museum of California, Mills College Art Museum, Richmond Art Center, Palace of the Legion of Honor, de Young Museum, San Francisco, San Diego Museum of Art, and Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco.
Harry passed away in 2022, just shy of his 92nd birthday.