Erica Mahinay

I met Eri­ca Mahi­nay this past fall at the Ver­mont Stu­dio Cen­ter while we were res­i­dent artists. I thought her work was amaz­ing in per­son, and so this morn­ing I was very excit­ed to see a press release from her in my inbox. 

Eri­ca’s work is play between paint­ing and sculp­ture, and what I real­ly love about it is how ambi­tious it is. Ambi­tion can­not always be met, but her pieces — a com­bi­na­tion of paint­ing on can­vas sup­port­ed by phys­i­cal objects and instal­la­tion, real­ly cre­ate an envi­ron­ment for the view­er. A por­tion of Eri­ca’s artist state­ment:

As an emerg­ing artist, it is my ambi­tion to ampli­fy the scope of my work through com­pelling visu­al play, exten­sive dia­logue, and exam­in­ing my rela­tion­ship to the his­to­ry of paint­ing. In my work, I explore the psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al weight inher­ent in our con­struc­tion of “home”. My paint­ing-con­struc­tions uti­lize the famil­iar­i­ty of the home to explore notions of long­ing, dis­place­ment, inver­sion, truth, self-decep­tion, and per­se­ver­ance. By com­bin­ing a vari­ety of mate­ri­als, I am allowed to cre­ate a sys­tem of clues that cre­ate an imme­di­ate sense of famil­iar­i­ty, but in a way that is shift­ed and uncan­ny. Dense lay­ers of sub­tly col­ored paint and stripped away por­tions act in con­junc­tion with found objects and paint­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tions to cre­ate visu­al play between his­to­ry and inven­tion, dreams and mem­o­ry, and the past, present, and future. 

If you are local to Kansas City, Mis­souri, Eri­ca has a show at the Cocoon Gallery from March 4th to the 26th. 

First three images via her web­site. Last image via the Cocoon Gallery