Erin McIntosh

This series began in 2017 as a playful approach to abstracting architecture and landscape and inspired by a regular practice of making small hand-painted paper collages, both with my students in class and in my studio.

Overtime this series has evolved into an intuitive exploration of shape, color, rhythm, and movement. Each composition begins with a general idea for color palette and blocking out large invented shapes. A responsive process follows, painting layers of shapes, at times opaque and other times translucent, built up by adding, altering, and removing the underlying amalgamation of shapes through a responsive process. Occasional accenting lines are woven throughout as a contrasting and connecting element.

The compositions are ultimately arrived at through the search - a process of discovery - until all the parts feel harmoniously interconnected. The results are often lively and energetic within a densely packed space.

Initially inspired by seeing the exhibition, The Women of the Abstract Expressionism at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C., I set out to paint loosely and energetically, emulating the energy experienced in these mid-20th century paintings. Exploring a variety of gestural marks, layering, and movement, these paintings organically evolved into resembling landscapes. I am deeply drawn to landscape - both observing it in my every day and painting it “en plein air.”

The dynamism of these paintings is underpinned by a deep understanding of expression through movement - I have a background training in classical ballet, where emotion is conveyed through moving the body. A love of instrumental music, specifically piano within the crossover classical genre, also informs this work. A belief in the importance of nonverbal expression is at the heart of making these paintings.

These works on paper are inspired by life seen through a microscope. Branching out of a collaborative project with two science researchers - a microbiologist and an entomologist - these imaginative interpretations of the microbial world have developed a life of their own.

All paintings in this gallery are made with watercolor and gouache on cold pressed watercolor paper. The play of translucent shapes forming the “ground” with opaque layers superimposed on top, give the pictorial space an illusion of depth, furthering the implied movement within the open composition, creating a sense of an endless world.

I love exploring color and shape through collage. Collage allows for quickly working through many possibilities for finding interesting shape and color combinations and compositions. There is great freedom in the process of moving shapes around and trying out many options until a satisfying composition is found.

These collages are made from hand-painted paper swatches, rather than found paper. I constantly make these color swatches alongside working at my easel on canvas paintings. Using up leftover paint in this way extends the life of each color mixed.

I also use these color swatches when I’m moving a larger painting towards the finish line. Paper swatches allow me to test out multiple color possibilities that will help resolve a painting. Additionally, the collages often will spark ideas for larger paintings. The process becomes cyclical and generative.

I have worked on what has become known as the “Garden Fresh” series, since 2012. The name of the series comes from the title of the very first painting, before I knew it would become a series. Layers of repetitive marks - “dots”, dashes, brushstrokes - are layered and accumulate to form a color field distilled from cultivated gardens and wildflowers, and informed by the Impressionists, most especially paintings by Claude Monet.

The abstracted florals are an extension of both the “Garden Fresh” series and “Gestural” series, with a desire to work with more concretely floral imagery. The imagery and compositions are mainly generated through imagining flowers rather than looking at them directly. “All over” compositions seem to burst with organic life as each painting emerges through the process of painting, rather than planning.