Meditation practice and study influence my thoughts on perception, attention, presence, and the choices I make in the construction and practice of oil painting. Each series uses mark, color, and orientation to explore the interplay between observational and sensate experience of landscape.

I start each painting with a thin layer of paint to create a colored ground. I then build the image through layers of oil paint on this dry surface. Through erasure and selective layering, I often leave parts of the ground visible in the final image so a prominent and substantial element of the painting is the ground showing through. In this way, presence and form arrive from the ground itself. My favorite landscapes include the mind in meditation, wave surfaces, tide pools, fallow fields, and old growth forests. 

Erin Carney creates color-driven landscape and abstract paintings using direct and indirect oil painting techniques. Her work explores states of being, land use, landscape, and concepts of attention and perception.

Erin Carney holds an MFA in Painting from the Graduate School of Figurative Art at the New York Academy of Art, a BFA in Sculpture and a BA in English Language & Literature from the University of Michigan. Carney has exhibited in solo and group shows throughout the United States. She has taught painting and drawing at Binghamton University and SUNY Purchase and been a guest lecturer at many colleges and universities. Erin Carney lives and works in Sleepy Hollow, NY.