No Ordinary Blue – 2024

The Robin Rice Gallery is pleased to present Erica Hauser’s second painting exhibition, ‘No Ordinary Blue’, and her first at the gallery’s location in Hudson, NY. This new collection, all acrylic on canvas, employs her love for color and composition conceptually, as she interprets the play of patterns and shapes on a surface, with vibrant and earthy variations of blues side by side. In mixing shades from pale sky to dark navy, with a palette of cobalt, steel blue, ultramarine and soft white, she finds a sense of depth and calm within the formal parameters of ‘blue’. Titles are drawn from song lyrics, moods, nature, and pigments to further suggest the range of feelings and associations that the color holds.

Growing up working for her father’s firewood business, her longtime seasonal job as a firewood stacker informs her painting, guiding her intuition as she stacks and arranges split wood in creative and evocative piles for customers. In ‘Moon Blue Stack’, she hand-draws and paints the oblong shapes, fitting them into a towering yet delicately balanced pile. For ‘Sugar Blue Stack’ she cuts the rounds from painted canvas. In most works the forms are nearly free-floating but anchored together in space at one or two points, depending on each other for stability. The organizational quality of the patterns in her paintings, and hard-edged painting style, echo her past jobs: rolling chocolate truffles, decorating cookies, and lettering ceramics.

Artists Ellsworth Kelly, Josef Albers, and Andy Goldsworthy influence Hauser’s work, as do designers Sonia Delaunay, Arne Jacobsen, and Verner Panton, referencing the clean lines and organic shapes of mid-century modern design. Her colors often come from vintage materials like old toys, textiles, advertisements, and odd-colored crayons.

Hauser holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and is based in Beacon, NY. She exhibits regularly throughout the Hudson Valley and NYC. From 2013-2020 she owned Catalyst Gallery in Beacon, where she worked with artists, curated group shows, and hosted events. She has participated in area projects such as ArtStream Kingston, Terrain Biennial Newburgh, and Beacon 3D. In 2022 she received a NYSCA Statewide Community Regrant through Arts Mid-Hudson to create new work, and an Awesome Newburgh grant to expand a local public art installation.