Erin Parish

Erin Parish

Ocean Teacher

April 4- May 4th, 2024

Spanierman Modern is pleased to announce it's first solo exhibition of Erin Parish's, Ocean Teacher.  The exhibition, titled Ocean Teacher is comprised of 15 of her most recent landscape-inspired abstract paintings.

The title "Ocean Teacher” stems from her fascination with the recent discoveries of the deep seas and the importance of its perpetuation in relationship to the existence of life as we know it. Her works are, however, purposefully non-political. Parish doesn’t not want to lend her work to this discourse. She seeks to inspire rather than lecture. It is no coincidence her chosen title is also a translation of “Dalai Lama” from Tibetan.

Historically, Art and nature have found intersection across many eras: rural and historical for the Classicists, grandiose and wild for the Romantics, and sensitive and poetic for the Impressionists.  The dialogue between art and nature seems to stem from either our complete and utter awe of its untamable power or the need to understand, organize, control, and ultimately dominate it.

A perpetual student of advancements in brain studies and perception, Parish’s attention to light and atmosphere and its transcendent quality as mankind seeks a vision of something higher from within and without. This stems from her affinity to the American 19th century Luminists such as Frederic Church, and Martin Johnson Heade as well as to Sturm und Drang’s emotional intensity and individual subjectivity. Each painting offer’s itself for contemplation by Beholder’s Share. Rather than discovering "Erin Parish," she posits the paintings for self-discovery. These works reveal themselves slowly.

Structurally, Parish has long painted circles, orbs, bubbles with a smattering of diamonds and mosaic. Each painting is an unmapped journey, informed by the sciences, yet not tied to its rules. She seeks to impart a transcendent universality in these repeating forms, often bringing attention to the relentlessness of the circular structure. She is keenly aware of the reverence for the grid, the antithesis of the most basic creation model employed by nature. 

To say that Parish is a painter is a very limited description of her practice. Parish creates nature inspired environments utilizing colorful abstract forms, creating atmospheric works more akin to time and space than two dimensional paintings. These works are to be experienced intuitively and bodily and be immersive, to create meditative states of being and feeling. Her subtle composition offers a sense of quietude and depth.  Her painting process uses color and forms to evoke a sense of expanse and volume. Geometric abstracted configurations endlessly shift and move across the painting’s surface. The circular structures are activated through repetition, layering and transparency.

Erin grew up in inner-city Detroit during the turbulent 1970s and 1980s. At the age of 11 she was given her first studio alongside her father and stepmother, a place she has maintained since 1979.  She attended Wayne State University to study life drawing while in high school. She received her BA from Bennington College in Vermont in 1988, studied in Berlin in 1987 at The Hochschule der Kunste and received her master’s in fine art from Queens College in 1990. Erin currently lives and works in Miami Beach, Florida