Erica Hauser - 2021

Erica Hauser is a Newburgh, NY based artist and has a BFA from the School of Visual Arts (2002). She received a 2011 NYFA grant, and has attended artist residencies in New Mexico, Vermont, and upstate NY. Her paintings have been shown nationally, most regularly in the New York area. From 2013-2020, Hauser owned and operated Catalyst Gallery in Beacon, where she worked with artists to install exhibitions, curate group shows, and host cultural events. She participated in The Other Art Fair Brooklyn in 2017 and Bristol UK in 2018, and is in the 2021 Virtual Edition of TOAF LA. She has created public art installations throughout the Hudson Valley. Her most recent solo exhibition 'House Party' was on view during summer 2020 at Ann Street Gallery in Newburgh.

In the current exhibition at the Robin Rice Gallery, Hauser employs her love for color and composition conceptually as she experiments with how patterns and shapes coexist on a surface, vibrant and murky colors side by side. Artists Josef Albers, Andy Goldsworthy, Sonia Delaunay, and Ellsworth Kelly inform Hauser’s work, along with mid-century design: memories of vintage materials like old toys, textiles, and crayons – the ones left in the box, the ones no one wanted to use – influence her palette.

Growing up working for her father’s firewood business, her longtime, weekend job as a firewood stacker inform her painting, guiding her intuition as she stacks and arranges creative and evocative piles for clients. In addition, her job rolling chocolate truffles, along with a love for typography and natural forms, inform the organizational quality of the patterns in her paintings.