Carol S. McHarg has a studio in Philadelphia near Washington Square and commutes to New York weekly to teach landscape design at Columbia University. She has had exhibitions worldwide including those at Brad Cooper Gallery, Florida and The Pennsylvania Academy of fine Arts, Philadelphia. Her work is in several collections in Italy and the U.S. She is the author of the best selling book Nature’s Design, published by Rodale Press, in which she explained how to design with nature.
The recent works of Carol McHarg push the boundaries of contemporary landscape painting. She expresses her history and ideology as a Landscape Architect and at the same time moves the history of art onto a new plane. These powerful paintings look at ecology, design, cartography and the impacts of engineers and designers to question what is natural and what is not.
This narrative is embodied not only in the subject matter, but also in the style and materiality of the work. The artist combines symbolism with reality, perspective with flatness and an exaggerated configuration of nature overlaid with an artificial reconfiguration of the landscape. She questions what is natural and what is man-made in the world at large and in the painting itself.
Peter Reed, Senior Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs at The Museum of Modern Art, states, “Carol’s work provides a provocative commentary on the subject of contemporary landscape.” Osvaldo Romberg, world-renowned artist, says her striking landscapes are beautiful without being decorative, inventive and also painterly. He refers to her work as “indefinable.”
Collection
Commissions
Mr. and Mrs. James Blaine, Mt. Desert, ME Ms. Joan Colin Carpenter, Rome, Italy Mr. and Mrs. Marcello Cicchinelli, Rome, Italy Mr. Corradino Colaci, Lecci, Puglia, Italy Mr. and Mrs. Luciano Lazzarini, Rome, Italy Ms. Kim Matthews, Boulder, CO Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Roberts, Philadelphia, PA Mr. Henry Thomas, Princeton, NJ
Professional Experience
1990-present Artist, Unionville, PA
2005-present Landscape Design Studio Master, Columbia University, New York, NY
2002-2004 Program Leader/Professor, Penn State University Department of Landscape Architecture, Rome, Italy
1995-1996 Adjunct Professor, Temple University Department of Landscape Architecture, Ambler, PA
1980-2000 McHarg Landscape Architects, Unionville, PA
