Artist Statment
By: Erin Cooper
My art is heavily influenced by legends and mythological creatures. It can be lighthearted and simple, meant purely for entertainment, or it can be a poetic paradox. This depends on my mood and the project at hand. When leaning toward the latter the art in question is meant to be meditated upon, as I have tried to capture something of its spirit. I try to capture the sense of something beyond reality in my art, outside of just what we can see and touch with our physical bodies; something that reaches in to us from the realms of dreams and stories.
All my work is approached in a highly intuitive manner. I let things flow out as they come to me, not thinking much about what they mean until they emerge. The meaning may not occur to me until the work is finished. By doing this, I tap into a free enigmatic source of the unconscious and of that which is inner and of the soul. In my work I like to show the energy beneath things, whether it is through the personality and movements of a character, or in the intricate Mandela or fractal like patterns that evolve in my paintings. I like to do this because it gives more life to the work, and because I believe there are forces unseen and unexplained that drive us as humans. This force to me is both primal and spiritual.
Although some of my work consists of black and white monotones, I prefer to have a symphony of color. Music inspires my work a lot; I love all sorts of music. I often listen to it as I work as that it helps me bring my work to life, giving it an essence of its own. Music inspires movement, an essential element of creative process, both in animation and across a canvas. I have a tendency to use serpentine lines and shapes to express this movement in my art. I find these lines appealing to the eye and give the viewer’s eye ease to move from one part of a work to the next. Also, curved lines and shapes work well with organic subject matter to which I prefer working with rather than inorganic shapes.