Beer With a Painter: Hilary Harkness
If paint doesn't feel good coming off the brush, you pretty much have nothing,” said the artist, whose canvases depict humanity in all its rollicking riot and contradiction.
On stunningly small surfaces, Hilary Harkness packs in a vast density of information — over-the-top fantasias that ruminate on a “what-if” proposition applied to known histories. I had gotten to know Harkness socially in the 10-year period between her solo exhibitions, seeing work only occasionally during that time, so I found her 2023 show at New York City’s PPOW Gallery quite literally breathtaking. She requested we meet in January on Zoom, since she was on deadline and lives and works in New Jersey, with the promise that I would “see everything and miss nothing.” Still, even as Harkness pulls open the curtain, she maintains a sense of mystery. She tells me that she is the last person who would paint a self-portrait, avoids being photographed, and often centers others in her own artist talks.
With a hyperrealist, maximalist approach, Harkness builds worlds complete with preternatural beauty, optimism, and joy, while simultaneously littering them with human foibles — revenge, power, hubris, gore, kink. Her cross-sections of battleships inspired by World War II vessels reveal gender-neutral and queer orgies; she exposes psychological truths behind the iconic relationship between writer Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas; and she unveils the disguises worn by women who served in the Civil War. Her canvases lure us in with the bait of recognizable elements and figuration, drawing us into another universe until we find ourselves wondering how we got there.
The way her mind works in conversation feels similar; she can freely reel off facts that I never saw coming. We spoke about Richard Scarry, hydraulic mining schemes, sex on battleships, and the mystical relationship between a violin bow, a quill, and a paintbrush.
Born in 1971, Harkness received her BA from the University of California (UC), Berkeley, and her MFA from Yale University. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the FLAG Art Foundation and the Academy of Arts and Letters in New York; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art in Oregon, and the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut, among others. She is represented by PPOW Gallery in New York. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
