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Paintings: 2012 | 2011-12 | 2009-10 | 2007-09 |
Painting and drawing are my primary means of distilling my experience of a world both present and past. In recent years, certain themes of sense-memory and a vintage aesthetic have emerged in my work, as well as my appreciative observation of the ordinary. Some objects I isolate, to emphasize their form; in other paintings I create an environment, real or improvised. I work on site and from photographs I take, and my resonant impressions fill the spaces in between. Every observation's story can be taken literally or emotionally, depending on one's personal history or feeling of nostalgia. While some of my favorite artists painted or photographed scenes and objects from their own places in time, my own attraction to similar subjects can lead me on a wistful, pleasurable hunt. In describing faded colors, textures of rusted metal, peeling paint or a sun-bleached facade, and an earnestness of expression in text or design, I find my own answers for painting what I do. While painting Cold Drinks, based on an old vending machine, I imagined jumping down from my pickup, walking into a classic dusty roadside store on a hot afternoon, digging into a cooler and pulling out the dripping icy bottle. I like the evocative power of words and images, and I try to imbue a picture with a sense of stillness and clarity in a way that leaves viewers with their own thoughts.
Antiques store installation for Windows on Main St 2010, Beacon
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Erica Hauser is a painter and illustrator based in Beacon, NY. She grew up on a half-dirt road by a reservoir in Brewster, NY, and graduated with a BFA in 2002 from School of Visual Arts in NYC, having also studied at Cornell University and the Art Students League of New York. She moved to the Hudson Valley in early 2007, drawn by Beacon's natural beauty, creative inspiration and diverse, lively community. |
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press: "Like Frank O’Hara’s observational poems about the small details of life in New York City, Hauser’s paintings celebrate the seemingly ordinary things that often go unnoticed... Though she mostly paints from her own photographs, Hauser’s goal isn’t photorealism. “It’s a holding on to a moment or an experience,” she says. Hauser offers unusual perspectives of ordinary objects through subtle alterations, like cropping a movie marquee to frame a few decontextualized letters over an angular edge, or bleaching out colors to create soft vintage static. Such stylistic choices imbue the early-Americana objects with a dreaminess akin to flashbacks in old movies. Classic Ford trucks and antique gas station pumps are real things, but seem part of an intangible past—one only accessible through memory, or, it seems, one of Hauser’s paintings." Chronogram, Aug 2012 "Erica Hauser’s tightly orchestrated paintings evoke a sense of man’s relationship to water through the aged and often historic architectural elements she depicts. Through the use of simple strokes and stark detail, Hauser captures the complexities of surfaces and patinas to create the sense of realism and give the viewer an active sense of participation within her scenes." "Erica Hauser’s work is indelibly linked to travel in its various forms... [Her] precise handling of paint faithfully represents these textures and effects of light without overstating the subjects’ nostalgic associations. Her antiquarian imagery registers as consistently cool, tempered as it is by her documentarian’s sense of objectivity, and graciously allows the viewer to time-travel and fill in the backstory." Click here for a short film by Stephen Blauweiss. |
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solo exhibitions: Upcoming: 2012: Drive-By Gallery at Lift Trucks Project, Croton Falls, NY selected group exhibitions: 2013 2012 2011 2010 projects/grants/other: 2013 2012 2011 2010 2010, 2008, 2007 2009-2012 2008 & 2012 2007 2002-ongoing |
