| FALL JEWELS, OIL, 6 X 16 |
By Devon Jackson
“I get hung up on details—that’s very relaxing to me,” laughs H.L. “Erin” Harnett. “And I try always to put imperfections into my paintings. Like in FALL JEWELS, the leaves are brown and spotted, and the persimmons are ripe and have lots of divots and scars. People seem to really like all those imperfections.”
Born in Bermuda in 1932 to a mother who worked as a buyer for Bonwit Teller and a father who sold maritime insurance, Harnett has been a paragon of bootstrapping independence ever since—from her three marriages and four children to homes in Canada, Mexico, Tahiti, Jamaica, and now California, where she has lived off and on since the 1950s. Over the years, she had held many creative jobs, working as a landscape designer, a commercial artist, a fashion design artist, and an inker for Disney animations.
Harnett says in the last 23 years she has painted more than 3,000 paintings. “I’m not into the deep stuff of metaphors or hidden meanings,” she relates. “I paint what I paint because I like to look at it.”
She is represented by Lee Youngman Galleries, Calistoga, CA.
Featured in “The Produce Aisle” in November 2008