Erin McIntosh is an artist and educator born in Ohio and living in Athens, Georgia. She holds two B.F.A.s, one in Studio Art and the other in Art Education from The University of Georgia and holds an M.F.A. in Studio Art with an emphasis in Drawing and Painting also from The University of Georgia.
Erin’s paintings have been published in New American Paintings and exhibited widely around the southeast including at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, The University of the South in Sewanee, TN, The Museum of Arts and Sciences in Macon, GA, and Shain Gallery in Charlotte, N.C.. She has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center and at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Erin has taught for The University of Georgia’s Cortona, Italy Study Abroad Program and the Georgia Museum of Art. Erin is Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of North Georgia.
Erin’s paintings have been collected nationally by numerous private collectors and are represented by Gregg Irby Gallery in Atlanta, GA.
Statement
This process-driven, recent work is a non-linguistic response to the history of abstraction and an exploration of the dynamic nature of the body and mind. These investigations stem from an interest in the strong forces of invisible things from emotions to the microscopic world. Using canvases that span the scale of my physical body, these paintings seem to suggest the complexity of the body as a vessel that senses, feels, thinks, moves, and changes.
The dynamism of music and dance both inform my use of color, marks, and composition. Improvisational, formal investigations of the play between translucent and opaque marks are non-descriptive however form to become a visual field which is suggestive of the wild and organic nature of the body and mind.
For me, the excitement of painting comes through the uncertainty of what exactly will unfold on a canvas. Constructing surprising visual metaphors and creating paintings that visually delight are what I hope to achieve in a painting.
