The 17-year-old is what Northwood art teacher Ingrid Van Slyke describes as a quiet student with natural talent. When Van Slyke introduces Harrison to a new art medium or concept, she’ll give a head nod, maybe an “OK.” A few days later, Van Slyke said, Harrison will have half of a painting done.

“I’m like, ‘Holy cow!'” Van Slyke said.

Harrison is a “rarity,” her art teacher says, showing an understanding of complex art concepts and more maturity than most students her age.

“I’m in the middle of getting my master’s in painting at (the Savannah College of Art and Design) right now, so I’m entrenched with a lot of painters and stuff in my classes,” Van Slyke said. “And she is already at college level.”

Harrison’s artistic skill level is especially impressive considering she’s only been painting since she was a freshman at Northwood. Then again, that’s pretty typical.

“Everything she does, she does really well,” Van Slyke said.

Harrison is a top student at Northwood. She excels at subjects from math, science, English and art to extracurricular activities like cooking and ski jumping. She even made it to the Ski Jumping Junior Nationals a couple of times.

A native of Lyme, New Hampshire, Harrison came to Lake Placid for ski jumping competitions from the time she was a kid. She thought attending Northwood would give her even more time to train. But between injuries and growing older and more aware of the dangers involved with the sport, Harrison said she decided to drop ski jumping this year. She said there were other things that interested her more.

Painting has become one of those interests. Harrison said she wasn’t into making art before she came to Northwood, though her uncle was a painter. She grew up looking at his art on the walls of her home, and she said that might have influenced her affinity for art. When she enrolled in an art class her freshman year, she took to it — especially painting.

This year, instead of taking an art class, Harrison is working on an independent art study. She’s researching “The Group of Seven,” a group of Canadian artists from the early 1900s that was known for their Impressionistic landscapes. Van Slyke introduced her to the group last year, and Harrison was drawn to them.

“I just loved so much of their artwork, so I thought it would be interesting to spend a year researching each of them and learning about their individual styles,” Harrison said.

Harrison has spent hours painting en route to her goal of finishing seven pieces, each one in the style of a different member of the Group of Seven. But she doesn’t put her brush straight to the canvas; instead, she sketches out small panels of each landscape in her sketchbook to conceptualize the painting. Eventually, she moves from a small sketch to a small painted panel called a “color study,” where she experiments with paint colors to get an understanding of how she’ll combine hues in the final product. The color studies turn into paintings drafted on paper, which eventually turn into framed paintings on canvas. So far, Harrison has finished five of seven paintings.

Van Slyke said that when Harrison paints, she “gets in the zone.” When her time to work on her independent study is up, Van Slyke said she often has to tell Harrison to go to her next class several times before Harrison snaps out of her flow and hears her.

“Which is a great place to be when you’re a painter,” Van Slyke said.

Staying inspired is a constant back-and-forth for many creatives, and Harrison’s creative process is no different. She said that she’ll spend some weeks working around 20 hours on her study, and other weeks she can’t get herself to go to the studio because she’s so frustrated or stuck on something.

It’s hard to adapt to someone else’s painting style, she said. Because none of the landscapes she’s painting are meant to look completely realistic — the shapes aren’t quite normal, and the colors are slightly uncanny — she’s trying to copy a style that’s different from how she’d usually do things. She said listening to music helps her work through the frustration.

Harrison said she isn’t sure what her style is yet. She’s comfortable painting landscapes, but she’s antsy to experiment with some other styles after painting nature scenes all year. She’s interested in getting better at sketching, drawing and doing larger projects in pen.

After she graduates from Northwood, Harrison plans to pursue her love of cooking. She said she hopes to keep painting and art in her life, but she has a job at a restaurant back home and she plans to return there to cook. She said she’s experimenting with different kinds of cooking.

Northwood School expects to hold a presentation of all its senior independent study projects at the Northwood Innovation Hub on Main Street this spring. Van Slyke said Harrison would likely have a showing of her paintings on the second floor during the presentation. A date for the event hasn’t been finalized yet.