Amy Erickson is a figurative painter who lives and works in Seattle, WA. She works from the live model and still life in oil, acrylic, collage, and drawing media. She sees her process as a feedback loop between research and invention. Research involves making smaller images directly from life, her in-progress painting, or of some artifact in her imagination - “primary documents” that record information about color, form, and perception. She uses these smaller works to generate larger paintings in her studio that compress these perceptual “documents” together with additional layers of time, emotion, narrative, and sensation.

She is currently working on a series of observational paintings that feature girls she knows well. I have the individual come to my studio, pose for an hour or two while I make a small painting and some drawings, take photographs, and then I use all of that to create a larger painting. I want the paintings to feel like expansive sensory experiences of color and form, specific to the moment I had with them modeling in my studio, but that are also tied to a story specific to our friendship and larger archetypal symbol that reveals itself as I work on the painting. I’m always trying to challenge what I think is my perception of what I’m looking at, and not follow a linear progression of ‘general to specific’ aka just copying what I see. I want the images to be a fight between illusion and materiality, with flat spots of color blooming together and somehow coalescing into a discernible body in space.

I draw inspiration for my compositions through a process of searching junk shops, the personal belongings of loved ones, and my own domestic surroundings. The sentimental or symbolic attachment I have toward these objects is merely a jumping-off point for deeper perceptual digestion. The interplay between looking, recording, and composing through mark and shape is the core of my process. The experience of making is both exploring and surrendering what is "precious" - a journey toward discovering something more sublime.

Website: amyericksonstudio.com
Instagram: @amyericksn