Erika Ranee

Statement

Every day a heart pulses, a leaf flutters—a bird caws. My recent paintings express the hums and beats of small worlds writ large. I build each painting often layered with the detritus of my daily experiences. I’m interested in the conservation of stories and in harnessing moments of stasis as a counterpoint to the transient impermanence of this digital communication age. I take cues from the cacophony of sounds, smells, light and the tactile, and pull it all together in an intuitive visual freestyle. In the process of building layers, artifacts are embedded and obscured in a viscose preserve of paint and shellac like prehistoric insects in amber. Liquid conduits connect and ooze through paint and water networks like blood cells and heartbeats. Delicate and brusque marks and sprays are applied in response to external and internal atmospheric rhythms. Like pages from a journal each artwork is an exercise in pushing paint around to articulate a time capsule on canvas.