Erin Elizabeth: Birth & Rebirth
In this interview, watercolor artist Erin Elizabeth shares her journey as a mother and painter. From overcoming obstacles after leaving art school, to finding new inspiration after giving birth to her daughter, Erin discusses the evolution of her creative process.
Tell me about your background and where your creative journey began.
I was born and raised in St.Louis, MO and I attended Catholic school K-12. I’m no longer a practicing Catholic, but I do find my work flirts with themes of a lot of the spiritually charged art I was surrounded by growing up. I was fortunate to come from a big supportive family that really encouraged my creative pursuits. I can remember being small enough to be on my Mom’s hip and looking at one of Monet’s waterlily paintings at the St.Louis Art Museum. It was important to her that I was exposed to art from an early age. If I wanted to make it, and I needed something to do it, my parents would find a way to provide it for me. In high school I started doing watercolor painting and I was just fascinated with how to control the medium.
I went to the Kansas City Art Institute and earned my BFA in painting and drawing. I only wanted to work figuratively. I shied away from watercolor because I just didn’t feel like works on paper were taken as seriously as opaque mediums on canvas. Truthfully when I work in oil I spend 95% of the painting just absolutely mad at it. I always felt a confidence and ease with watercolors but I left those for studies and sketches. I don’t think I ever presented a watercolor for critique. I just didn’t think anyone would take it seriously. When I discovered aquabord it changed everything about how I approached watercolor. Suddenly I could push the medium and take risks with it in ways that were impossible when I was working on paper.
Where do you find inspiration for your work?
Most often just observing my daughter. She’s very imaginative and inquisitive. The older she gets the more she forces me to slow down to help her understand the world around her. We go down rabbit holes on the internet researching anything from the color variety of ants or how many moons are orbiting Jupiter. It’s hard to just not be constantly inspired when you are forced to articulate so much around you and seek answers to questions when you don’t have them. There was a point in time prior to art school where I was considering going into photography. While I ultimately went the route of painting and drawing, all of my closest friends have backgrounds in film and photography and so I have an appreciation of composition and light. I love going on walks during the golden hour with Edith. We have a beautiful city park at the end of our block with a lagoon, and protected prairie spaces full of songbirds. Usually some good light and a walk to the park with Edith is all I need to see a painting in my mind.
What led you to focus on portraiture?
I love working figuratively. It’s very rare that I do a painting that doesn’t have a person in it. Even when I was supposed to be utilizing my electives in college for other mediums, I just kept signing up for figure drawing classes. When you somehow turn a few brush strokes into the essence of someone that makes you feel them on in the painting it’s just magic. Our brains are wired to find faces. We are designed to visually connect to humans, and I think there is a powerful charge in work that is figurative because of that. It always grabs me from across the room. I want my paintings to do the same.
How have your paintings shifted and evolved over time?
The paintings of my daughter started off as an exploration of her experiences in literal places. But over time she has kind of become this sort of muse and a conduit to bigger emotional concepts. The Edith I paint now is one that is guiding me through understanding my own mortality, my own familial history, my own human-ness. Broadly I think using a child as the model for my work is important because when you paint adults there is a lot more ego in their presentation. Children are natural at being in the moment and being the truest expression of their own character. They are honest but often without an agenda. It’s a dynamic that’s important for the sort of message I want to resonate through my work. Edith brings a gentleness to them.
What does a typical day in the studio look like for you, and how has your art practice grown or changed?
Right now my studio is my dining room. Because of Covid we are holding off on putting Edith in school. So there is no ‘typical’ day for me. Generally speaking I try to paint in the mornings while I occupy her with a project or a screen. After lunch I try to get Edith outside to play, and then if I’m lucky, she will be low energy when we come inside and I can squeeze in an hour or 2 more of painting or drawing before dinner time. That’s always what I aim for, but truthfully I’m lucking if I get 3 hours in a day. I try to save admin stuff for the evenings after she goes to bed. It’s not ideal. Some days are full of interruptions every 10 minutes and it’s hard for me to not be able to work up to a flow. I try to get those ‘flow’ days in when my husband is off work. I put my headphones in and tell Edith if she needs something, she can ask Dad.
Which experiences have impacted your work as an artist?
Hands down the birth of my daughter. Before Edith I was hardly making work. After art school I was full of “I Can’t”s and I just really let the world get in the way of showing up at the easel. I also just didn’t give myself permission to work the way I wanted. I really thought there’s only one way for me to do this as a figurative artist, and that was to be an oil painter and to do huge multi figure compositions. I did a lot of unhealthy comparison between myself and other artists and what they were doing. And that’s terribly and impossible pressure to put on yourself. It was a catch-22 of sorts. I thought I needed to make work I really didn’t enjoy making. And so my work suffered, and my desire to work suffered. After Edith it was like “OH. There are no rules. Anywhere. All the rules I made up for myself as a person and for myself as an artist are obsolete. I just need to make work, because I need it. Not because I need to be a certain kind of artist in order to be credible.” And really I just kind of took off from there. There was no time to wallow around in “what is my concept?” I wanted to paint watercolors of my daughter and then I just did it. And I just knew it was going to lead me through to the work I had been wanting to make all my life. I just stopped mistrusting my inner voice. Being a mom really trained me for that.
How has Instagram impacted your art career?
It really helped reconnect me to the art world. When I was on maternity leave I was so burned out with all the influencer style accounts showing me curated snapshots of how to raise a baby, or have a home, or a family. I knew it was really eroding me emotionally, and it dawned on me that some of my favorite artists might have instagrams. One artist account led to another suggested artist account and so on. I could see in real time what was being made right then and who was making it. I hadn’t been to an art fair in a decade, but suddenly I could glimpse into the Armory show through location tags and hashtags at 2 am while I was feeding my daughter. I discovered artist moms that were making work and making it work. I suddenly felt empowered and inspired. I didn’t have to go to gallery openings to see who was making what and where it was showing. I could now suddenly message these artists or interact with them through instagram and it really tore down all of the barriers I thought were there. It helped spark that itch to get back to work.
What are your future goals and aspirations?
I’m working towards my first solo show in 2021. I look around my studio and I finally have a body of work that I’m ready to share with people. I finally know what I’m trying to say with my paintings and that’s so liberating. I also want to start scaling up my watercolors as well as explore other mediums, I even have some performance art ideas tucked in the back of my brain. I feel full of possibility. I’m researching family friendly residencies to be able to explore some of these other ideas I have on the backburner. It’s important for me to find one that allows my family to come along. It’s important for me that Edith gets to see into my process and my dedication to my craft. Until she objects, I want her to be around for as much of it as possible. But truly, a studio with a door that I can close now and then to work in privacy would be amazing.
Follow Erin on Instagram: @erinelizabethoart
Website: www.erinelizabetho.com