Romanticisim and the Theatre of Everyday Living

Erica Harney’s paintings reside in the interstices of realism and abstraction. They highlight the process of creating “selective realities,” which can be literal, like the fabrications of staged theaters, or existential, like the self-images we craft in an effort to help us perceive and be perceived by others. By exploiting the deceptive nature of paint, she allows remnants of the physical and intellectual process to emphasize that the images are an artifice —deliberately constructed, edited, and presented. Harney is a Philadelphia-based painter who holds a BFA from Alfred University and an MFA from Penn State. She has also studied at the Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy and has been a resident artist at ArtScapein Toronto, Weir Farm in Connecticut, the Palazzo Rinaldi Italy, and the Vermont Studio Center.