Myrna Harrison

1932-2025

Myrna Harrison was born in Hollywood, CA in 1932. Her father was an animator for the cartoon division of Columbia pictures, her mother a hat designer. She cannot remember a time that drawing and painting were not part of her life.

Her family moved to New York City in 1943, where she attended Music and Art High School. After briefly attending the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, she returned to New York City to study art at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art, NYC and Provincetown, MA. She showed in numerous juried and invitational group shows in the 50s, including the International Watercolor Biennial at the Brooklyn Museum.

She married Earl Pierce, a painter and former Hofmann student in 1954. In 1959 she received a BA (magna cum laude with Honors in English) and in 1960 an MA (English) from New York University. At NYU she studied with Philip Guston.

In 1960, Myrna and Earl moved to California, where she was a Teaching Assistant in the English department at UC, Berkeley. She and Earl Pierce were divorced in 1965. She remained in California for the next fifteen years and became Assistant Dean of Instruction at Contra Costa College in 1974 and Dean of Instruction at San Jose City College in 1976.

In 1980 she moved to Phoenix, Arizona to become President of Rio Salado Community College (1980-85), Gateway Community College, (1985-88) and Phoenix College (1988-93). She retired in 1993 and moved to Wickenburg, Arizona to a studio overlooking a saguaro-filled canyon of the Sonoran Desert. Her expressionist, color-saturated paintings of the desert, canyons and mountains surrounding her evoke the vibrant, fierce landscape of the southwest.

(1932 – 2025)