ERIKA CANTIN
Painting
My work is a continual interaction between color, shape, and overlapping imagery. I focus on making my work primarily process based so that transformation is possible. Having a bold chromatic palette allows the colors to vibrate against each other, making tension and interruption in those same rhythms. Although the objects in my work are vaguely recognizable, they are references of patterns and assemblages I have once seen and therefore recall. Through my process, I am able to take pieces and reconfigure them from their original state to create a new reference. My work emanates a sense of vitality thus inciting the viewer to make their own personal perceptions, rooting from their ever-changing associations.
Something To Hold Onto features a wooden lattice as the central structure that binds together my abstracted thoughts and memories. Acting like a skeleton for my painting, the lattice offers support to the ever-growing layers that live on top of it. Large cutouts of different shapes and vivid colors weave in and out of this grid plane. Layering one abstraction over the other and letting that reveal visceral coincidences and unexpected harmonies.
Something To Hold Onto, 2020-2021
Acrylic, paper, and fabric on wooden lattice
84" x 96"