Erin Loree

“Each painting in my practice proposes a new journey of discovery. Foregoing a plan or references, I embrace uncertainty and allow the image and meaning to reveal itself as I work. I’m interested in the delicate balance between intention and chance, transformation and inversion, and how the unanticipated often reveals itself in unlikely places. I allow the work to continuously change states by applying thick, impasto paint, which is deliberately scraped away, then reapplied. I shift dense globs of paint around the surface, dragging, scraping, and nudging them into their final locations as the dualities of shadow and light, lightness and weight, pushing and pulling, reveal paradoxes and complexities. What can appear light may also be heavy; comfort can give away to discomfort; what looks familiar can instantly feel strange. Through this, a sort of metamorphosis takes place and there is a feeling of the painting coming into being all at once, as if in accordance with its own inner logic.

Soft, diffused gradients of colour set the stage in these new paintings. Their meditative luminosity soothes the experience of aggressive slabs of opaque oils protruding from the surface. Environmental motifs such as mountains, portals, suns, and moons appear in the work, often as ambiguous painterly forms, hinting at the transience of natural phenomena. How does the fiery descent of the sun or an erupting volcano mirror the volatility of our own emotional states? How do the ageless stars or a stoic mountain suggest stability and reliability in a world of turmoil and constant change? These dual experiences embody the feeling of being on a precipice, at a threshold between two worlds. I think of each painting as a continuation of the others, each a step along the journey, and a mirror back to ourselves in our constant transformation.” - Erin Loree

Erin Loree is a Canadian artist living and working in Toronto. She completed her BFA at OCAD University in 2012 and received a Certificate of Advanced Visual Studies from OCAD’s Florence Program. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in Toronto, Montreal, New York, San Francisco, and the UK, with a recent museum solo exhibition at the Tom Thomson Art Gallery in Owen Sound, Canada. She has work in a number of collections including Toronto Dominion Bank, Holt Renfrew, and Imago Mundi. Loree was awarded the Robert Pope Artist Residency at NSCAD University in Halifax and has participated in residencies at Artscape Youngplace in Toronto and Sachaqa Centro de Arte in the Peruvian Amazon Jungle. She has been the recipient of numerous awards including the 2012 Drawing and Painting Medal and Nora E. Vaughan Award from OCAD University, as well as an Ontario Arts Council grant. Loree’s work has been featured in YNGSPC.ca, MOMUS.ca, CBC Arts, the Toronto Star, Beautiful Decay, Booooooom, Huffington Post, and has recently released a line of apparel in collaboration with New Balance. She is represented by Peter Robertson Gallery in Edmonton.