The preoccupations of Montserrat Associate Professor Tim Harney’s work are many and varied. While he paints landscapes, still life, and creates non-objective collages, the imagery of his paintings often involves the figure and some form of psychological portraiture. Some of the ideas and feelings expressed in his paintings, collages, and works on paper concern a sense of loss, the passage of time, things remembered or glimpsed — a history. The subject matter is also personal and second nature to Harney’s experiences: family, history, memory, dreams, and loss are the stuff of living and breathing and obviously, painting.

How Harney subtracts or adds to one form or another, juxtapose sizes and shapes, the consideration given to paint, color, and the marriage of different materials (and sources) has everything to do with the feelings and more literal aspects of his paintings. These are collections of things: materials with their own history, materials with a history that the artist has invested in them.

Harney enjoys working in a variety of media including oil, acrylic, pastel, and collage. The dimension of the work varies from large canvases to the smallest of miniatures. As Harney states directly, “I am a painter.”