Loren Erdrich
Loren Erdrich has been awarded residencies at the Jentel Foundation, Burren College of Art, Santa Fe Art Institute, thrice at Art Farm Nebraska, Sculpture Space, and the Vermont Studio Center. Notable accomplishments include publication in ARTMAZE Mag and exhibitions with Harper’s, The Untitled Space, Proto Gomez, and Field Projects in New York, Wasserman Projects in Detroit, and Anima Mundi in the UK.
Erdrich frequently collaborates with the poet Sierra Nelson, coauthoring the award-winning I Take Back the Sponge Cake (published by Rose Metal Press) and Isolation (limited edition, 2020). She holds an MFA from the Burren College of Art at the National The University of Ireland, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania. Erdrich lives and works in New York, NY.
Loren Erdrich Interview
1. Hi Loren, can you tell us about your background. How and when did you first start to paint?
I was fortunate enough to have exposure to art throughout both primary school and university and have always gravitated strongly towards painting and drawing. Starting in grad school I began painting exclusively on paper, usually using inexpensive watercolors and ink. I continued working in this mode until about 5 years ago when I came into possession of some raw dyes and pigments. These pigments were unlike anything I’d ever used before - each one reacted differently to water. Some flew across the page, pushing away all the other colors. Some formed fractal-like patterns as they dried. This injection of new materials was both disruptive and invigorating and soon after I also decided to begin painting on canvas again. It felt like a huge leap of faith to work on the canvas after almost a decade of working on paper and honing my proficiency in that medium. I had to remind myself how to stretch a canvas again. Since I was using somewhat unorthodox painting materials for canvas, I had to teach myself how to best apply my “paint.” These experiments have since become a necessary part of my process.
2. What is your process like? How do you begin to work?
I rarely use materials as intended and my process is a continuous dance between intentional and unintentional movements. I work on both muslin and canvas and water is a huge part of my process. I mix powdered pigments and dyes usually right on the unprimed fabric. The pigments and dyes are unbound, mixed solely with water instead of an acrylic or oil base. This leads them to behave extremely unpredictably. I often paint on both sides of the fabric, letting the colors bleed through to the other side. I work both stretched and stretched, and it is not unusual for me to unstretch and restretch a painting multiple times during its creation. When the painting is unstretched it lays directly on a drop cloth, and as both, the drop cloth and canvas are saturated with water the painting soaks up the color residue of prior paintings. My forms and figures take shape as the fabric dries. In my process, I truly embrace the unpredictable – and often the results are entirely magical. When I work I try to balance this magic with my own deliberate actions and choices.
3. What is your main source of inspiration?
My work has always been rooted in the emotional realm. I draw from my own physical experiences but focus on the emotional impacts and resonances of these experiences. I also look to the natural environment. I’ve become interested in the ways in which our bodies merge with the natural world. Images of decay, camouflage, immersion, reflection are now common in my work. Sometimes flesh itself sometimes becomes a landscape, in all its fragility, mutability, and resilience. There are so many metaphoric narratives these natural processes embody. My painting materials themselves also inspire me and inform my content. I find that using water, with its physical properties such as fluidity, permeability, and dissolution, gives rise to a world within my paintings that embrace softness and vulnerability.
4. As you mentioned, your work conjures a world in which softness, vulnerability, porousness, and malleability as forces of strength and connection, can you explain more how these subjects are interconnected in your work?
In my paintings, I often reference bodies that look like mine. For societies dependent on clearly defined borders to maintain order, certain types of bodies have long been portrayed as monstrous. In these societies, to be permeable is to be considered vulnerable, and vulnerability is seen as a weakness when control is the desired outcome. Things that cross boundaries are considered dangerous by the powers that be precise because they are in fact powerful - they have the power to disrupt ingrained systems and structures. My actual experience of living in a body with permeable boundaries has provided me with daily fuel to work from. I see moments where our boundaries are breached as opportunities for magic. I see the malleable and the fluid as potential points of expansion and positive change. I hope that by working with these characteristics within my practice I can give access to a world in which vulnerability is respected instead of restrained.
5. Human beings play an important role in the mysterious atmosphere of your works. What do these humans mean to you?
In past work, I have focused solely on the figure and forgone any reference to the background or environment. Nowadays, I go through periods where I am alternately less or more interested in the figure but I think humans will always appear in my work because my view of the world is ego-centric. Even when I try to depict a world larger than the human scale, I am still seeing it through the lens of a very human experience. That said, recently the environment has come more to the foreground in my paintings. I have always used physical proximity between figures as an expression of intimacy, but now I am interested not just in dissolving the distance between myself and others, but also between myself and the physical world around me.
