Erica Harney was born Westchester County, NY and grew up in and around Saratoga Springs, NY. She holds a BFA in Drawing and Painting from Alfred University, Magna Cum Laude and an MFA in Drawing and Painting from Pennsylvania State University. She has also studied at the Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy. She lives and paints in both Philadelphia and Lancaster, PA.
Significant solo exhibitions have taken place at the Greenpoint Gallery in Brooklyn, NY; The Pennsylvania State University, Penn State Harrisburg, the Red Raven Art Company in Lancaster, PA and the Estate Yard Gallery in Castlecomer, Ireland. Notable group exhibitions include the SELECT Fair at Art Basel Miami Beach, GoggleWorks Center for the Arts in Reading, PA, the Crane Arts Center in Philadelphia and several New York City galleries such as the Coleman Burke Gallery, Sara Meltzer Gallery, Kathleen Cullen Fine Art Gallery and James Cohan Gallery.
Her next major solo exhibition, You Are A Story That You Tell Yourself: Recent Work by Erica Harney will open at Cecil College in Elkton, MD in September 2015. She will also be a presenting a Visiting Artist lecture and workshop at the New Canaan Public Library in New Canaan, CT in July 2015.
Erica Harney is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Graham Endowed Fellowship, a Daniel J. Murphy II Award for Creativity, and a Christos N. Apostle Grant. Her work has been featured in several publications including Studio Visit Magazine, Southern Humanities Review, and TriQuarterly, and she illustrated the cover of Smoking Cigarettes, Eating Glass: A Psychologist’s Memoir by Annita Sawyer. Harney has been a resident artist at the Weir Farm National Historic Site in Connecticut, the Palazzo Rinaldi Artists’ Residency in Noepoli, Italy, and twice at the Vermont Studio Center. In October 2014 she was a resident artist at Artscape Gibraltar Point in Toronto.
In addition to independent studio work Erica Harney has worked collaboratively with visual artists, musicians, writers, and choreographers. She has also been trained by and assisted on projects with the world-renowned Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia. She has taught at the Pennsylvania State University School of Visual Arts and the New York State Summer School of the Arts as well as various workshops and community education classes. Recent lectures have taken place at the State University of New York at Fredonia as well as the Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, PA and the Wilton Public Library in Wilton, CT. Harney has curated and organized group exhibitions at Iona College in New Rochelle, NY, the Independent Rock School in Philadelphia, and the Pennsylvania State University.
Since 2012 Harney has worked professionally as a scenic painter for Philadelphia-area theatre companies: most notably, the Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, PA where she is the resident Scenic Charge.