After honorable discharge from service in the U.S. Coast Guard during WW II as a Sonarman on the USS Casper, a Patrol Frigate, he studied at the Bisttram School of Fine Arts in Los Angeles, and at the summer school in Taos, New Mexico. He settled in Taos in 1948 with his bride Barbara Sayre, a fellow art student and daughter of the eminent California desert painter F. Grayson Sayre.
They began building their adobe home and studios, from which they work today. His studies were eclectic, with Emil Bisttram, Louis Ribak, and Joe Fiore. In the winter of 1949 & 1950, he and Barbara went to Black Mountain College in North Carolina to explore the Bauhaus art design precepts of Walter Gropius, Paul Klee and Joseph Albers, studying with Joseph Fiore.
His first acceptance in a juried show was at the Second Southwest Exhibition of Prints at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in 1952. Since then he has entered, been accepted and won prizes in juried exhibits of The New Mexico Museum of Fine Art in Santa Fe, the Joslyn Museum of Art in Omaha, the Oklahoma Art Center, the Phoenix Art Museum, etc.
In 1951 he was invited to show with the La Fonda Artists Group, who include most of the surviving members of the Taos Founders, the original artists who discovered Taos for the art world. It had been expanded to include the modern and new traditional painters who arrived in the 1930's and 1940's, including Emil Bisttram, Ward Lockwood, Andrew Dasburg, Robert Ellis, Leon Gaspard, and many more. Harmon was elected a permanent member in 1952. He and his wife Barbara Sayre Harmon were elected as exhibiting members of the original Taos Artist's Association in 1962.
He is represented in permanent collections at The New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, The Joslyne Museum of Art in Omaha, Nebraska, The Oklahoma Art Center, The New Mexico Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, and The Taos Museum of Art.
Harmon's painting is generally based on the color theories promulgated by Josef Albers, including the concept of color change as demonstrated in Albers’ series: "Homage to the Square." There is also the visual phenomenon when two colors of opposite hue, but of the same value or chroma are adjacent. A black line or sometimes a white line, seems to separate the two colors and imparts an implicit luminosity. Another visual effect that Harmon discovered on his own came from his use of flat areas of color, sans shading or chiaroscuro. When two or more slightly different values of a color are side by side, a modeling from lighter to darker seems to the eye to take place. His personal technique of flat areas of color of different hues placed side by side visually appear as if modeled.
His signature work over the last thirty years, including more than 670 "Earth Form" series land¬scapes, has been the imaging of what has been described as "horizon"' paintings. His paintings depicting in an abstract form the long vistas the warm desert hues of the Southwest contrasting with the cool blues and greens along llano and laguna. In this series serene coloring and luminosity display the sense of tranquility in the landscape that has been his characteristic way.
In addition, Harmon has shown over the years an interest in exotic abstract figure compositions such as his "Three Graces" series. In 1987, after a trip which he had wanted to make since high school, to Thailand, Bali, and Java, he was inspired to paint a series based on the Hindu 'Gupta' style. The Apsaris, or tree spirits, consorts of the gods and the dancing girls of Buddha before his enlightenment; as they are depicted in the bas relief’s of Buddha's life on the Stupa at Borobudur in Java.
Recently Cliff Harmon's work has evolved into increasingly saturate colors, in more dramatic contrasts. In the flat areas of colors he still uses the principles defined above.
In November of 1996, Cliff Harmon celebrated 50 years of painting in Taos at three venues honoring him with showings of his work. His retrospective paintings and drawings were shown at the Van Vechten-Lineberry Taos Art Museum, the Stables Gallery of the Taos Art Association, while his new work was exhibited at the Total Arts Gallery.
May the 7th, 2010, Harmon was honored at the opening of the "Emil Bisttram and the Taos School of Art" exhibit at the Roswell Museum and Art Center, New Mexico, with an entire wall of his work. The opening and banquet is currently showing for six months with Emil Bisttrams's, Harmon's and other students’ work.