My recent paintings express the hums and beats of small worlds writ large. I build each painting through a form of layering, drawing from the detritus of my daily experiences. I'm interested in the preservation of stories and in harnessing moments of stasis as a counterpoint to the transient impermanence of this digital communication age. I take cues from the cacophany of city streets, its sounds and smells, as well as from minutiae of the natural world, and pull it all together in an intuitive visual freestyle.
In the process of building layers, artifacts are embedded, obscured and sometimes revisited in a viscose preserve of paint and shellac like prehistoric insects in amber. From memorializing a dead houseplant leaf, to excavating snippets from a buried layer of text, I follow the signs of what the painting wants. Liquid conduits and synapses connect and ooze through paint and water networks like blood cells and heartbeats. Delicate and brusque marks and sprays are applied in response to external and internal atmospheric rhythms. The challenge is to manifest this information visually. Like pages from a journal, each artwork is an exercise in pushing paint around to articulate a time capsule on canvas.
painters-table.com/link/gorkys-granddaughter/erika-ranee-studio-visit
My studio visit/interview with Gorky's Granddaughter:
www.gorkysgranddaughter.com/2013/08/erika-ranee-august-2013.html