Harry Joseph Ahysen was a painter, educator, author, and muralist from Port Arthur, Texas. He studied at Tulane University, earned a BFA from the University of Houston, and earned an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin.

​

Ahysen worked in oils and watercolors. In 1963, he joined Sam Houston State University as an assistant professor of oil painting and spent much of his career teaching art in Huntsville, Texas.

​

His exhibition record included the Mississippi National Exhibition in Jackson, where he won first prize in 1962 and 1965. He also exhibited in the Beaumont Tri-State Annual Art Museum Show, winning the President’s Award in 1963, and won first prize at the Houston Art League Annual in 1964. His work appeared in the San Antonio Five-State Watercolor Show, the Houston Power & Light Company Exhibition, a solo exhibition in Port Arthur in 1970, and the Southwestern Watercolor Society Exhibition in 1972.

​

Ahysen completed several major commissions, including a cover for The Texaco Star in 1957, a mural for the Buccaneer Hotel in Galveston in 1966, murals for the Flagship Hotel in Galveston in 1967, paintings for Huntsville National Bank in 1970, and landscape paintings for David Tinsley in Huntsville in 1971. His work was also represented in the Regent’s Room at the University of Texas.

​

In addition to painting and teaching, Ahysen wrote Composition Devices for Landscapes in 1970 and a monograph on artist Paul Schumann in 1972. His career combined studio painting, public commissions, art instruction, and published scholarship.