For many, Erin Currier’s paintings are recognizable by her use of collaged elements, and her portrait and figurative subject matter in large format. For her upcoming solo show at Blue Rain Gallery’s Santa Fe location, titled Sin Ropa,Currier has adopted a new aesthetic while returning to a beloved medium. Collectors can expect to see around 30 striking, minimalistic drawings of nude figures for the show, which opens on Valentine’s Day.
Cusco, marker and China marker on paper, 7¾ x 5½"
“Breaking away from her usual collage portrait painting, Erin Currier’s exhibition…introduces a collection of nude drawings that infuse the romance of the season with unexpected depth and sensuality,” says Blue Rain marketing director, Leah Garcia. “These pieces, stemming from Currier’s lifelong passion for drawing, unveil the artist’s commitment to a practice that goes beyond her accomplished career as a painter.”
Currier confirms that her first love in her artistic practice was indeed drawing, but her choice of subject matter appears to inform the entirety of her process. “I have always been, first and foremost, a humanist artist…so drawing the human figure and face in all their manifestations has been my life’s practice and joy,” she says.
Berlin, marker and China marker on paper, 12 x 9"
For the new work, Currier notes feelings of excitement about how “fresh and spontaneous they are,” she remarks. “Unlike my large-scale [collage paintings]—which are extremely time-consuming and carefully considered, and some of which are not unlike an epic mural replete with multiple figures and urbanscapes—the figure drawings were created quickly, on the spot, with no foresight. They are very much ‘of the moment.’ What they have in common with my larger works is that they honor the beauty and dignity inherent in all human beings, and they hopefully honor the originality and uniqueness of the individual while celebrating the collective.”
New Orleans II, marker and China marker on paper, 12 x 9"
Currier chose to name her drawings after places she’s traveled because she realized that “just as people have personalities and embody moods and ‘weather’ in any given moment, so do places.” For her piece titled Cusco, (after Cusco, Peru) for example, “the model had a warmth, roundness and quality that is hard to articulate but evokes something of civilizations past—lofty and familiar all at once,” she explains.
La Paz, marker and China marker on paper, 11 x 14"
“The same feelings I had in Cusco’s beautiful, curvy cobblestone streets worn to satin and high altitude, likewise, in Berlin, the model is rendered in the nightclub, [wintry] night-sky Prussian blue tones that I associate with that city—a city that is ‘cool’ in both connotations of the word and the model's posture…, evoking the many great philosophies and schools of thought that have risen from Germany.”
Sin Ropa, Valentine’s Day Nude Drawing Show: A Guadalupe Street Feature opens February 14 and will remain on view through Saturday, March 2. —
Blue Rain Gallery, 544 S. Guadalupe Street Santa Fe, NM 87501 • (505) 954-9902 • www.blueraingallery.com
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