Kindred spirits
ERIN CURRIER PAINTS A GLOBAL FACE ON PORTRAITS OF EXEMPLARY FIGURES
THE two Kyrgyzstani-Peruvian sisters, Antonina Shevchenko and Valentina Shevchenko, strike confident poses. Decked out in form-hugging athletic wear that shows off their muscular midriffs, they seem ready for the arena. Fierce competitors in the flyweight division of the UFC, these Muay Thai fighters and mixed martial artists bear welcoming smiles in artist Erin Currier’s mixed-media portrait, Las Hermanas Shevchenko (2021). But their eyes glimmer with ferocious intelligence.
Social justice activists, international sports figures, writers, political prisoners, and ordinary people are all subjects Currier has painted in her signature collage style, intent on honoring those who inspire hope, serve as role models, or otherwise exemplify the human spirit at its best. Almost all of the Santa Fe-based artist’s paintings are portraits. And all of them are made with a combination of acrylic paint, refuse, photographs, and printed materials collected from around the world. Trash is her medium, but, like an alchemist, she transforms it into gold.
“I’m a big fan of UFC and mixed martial arts,” says the 46-year-old Currier, whose exhibition, Passion, Pathos, and the Human Potential, opened at Blue Rain Gallery on Sept. 10. “It’s partly because, doing a little bit of that on my own, I see the level of commitment, dedication, and passion it entails.”
Her easel-mounted paintings are arranged in a circle in the spacious main room of her home and studio. A 5-by-3-foot wood table in the center of the room is laden with sketchbooks and her collection of found papers, including cigar wrappers, labels from aluminum cans, illustrations from old posters and magazines, and Mexican Loteria cards.
The day is warm, the windows open to a summer breeze, and the scent of sandalwood and magnolia from recently burned Nag Champa incense permeates the room. Currier sports black boots, a black dress, and a mahogany mane of hair. Despite her almost gothic appearance, she’s taken to painting subjects of resiliency and light, although Passion, Pathos, and the Human Potential was formulated as a direct response to the suffering that pervades all human existence. And that’s something that recently struck close to home for Currier in more ways than one.
“I lost people very close to me in the past few years, including my partner, my soul mate, who I was with for 21 years,” says Currier, a practicing Buddhist.” We traveled the world together. He was my best friend. He passed away four years ago. More than anything else, things like tango dancing, my martial arts practice, and my spiritual practice really helped me move through my grief.”
Another impetus for this body of work was the coronavirus pandemic. Currier was moved, she says, by the collective challenges posed by the public health crisis.
“People lost their businesses. Children couldn’t play together. People were isolated, lonely, depressed, and financially insecure. It highlighted the suffering that all humans endure, whether they’re rich or poor, young or old, and regardless of ethnicity.”
Currier’s current work is an expansion on the themes she explored in a series on athletes and activism she created last year called Muse in Motion. That show focused on individuals who overcame adversity to excel in physical activities or who use their visibility in the public sphere to call attention to social, political, and environmental issues.
“I really wanted to go deeper with individuals who use their passion to overcome challenges and suffering,” she says.
Currier’s portraits share a sameness. The bright, sparkling eyes and slight smiles of her subjects, who look posed for a photograph, carry over from one canvas to the next. And because the current series contains high-profile individuals, like U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, working from photographs is necessary in order for her to capture their likenesses.
In many of the portraits, a radiating halo surrounds the subject’s head, as though Currier was bestowing on them the status of saint or bodhisattva. It’s a carry over from her earliest pieces, made when she was studying Tibetan thangka painting while living in Taos.
“The first trash art I made were Buddhist deities. I was working in a coffee shop after college. I was blown away by how much stuff was being
thrown away. I started keeping the trash from my shift. I made Buddhas from empty coffee cups, tea wrappers, and half-and-half containers.”
Currier was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts. As a young girl, someone gave her a map of the world. Since that time, her wanderlust never wavered.
“When I graduated high school, I was accepted at a lot of good art schools on the East Coast. But I saw this brochure from the College of Santa Fe with a big bright blue sky over the desert. So I enrolled there and drove across the country, camping out along the way. I wanted to be a costume designer and screenwriter, and they had a film department there.”
Currier ended up in the theater department, studying costume design, scene design, and set painting. She graduated with a BFA in 1997. After college, she lived in Taos for about a decade, living an austere lifestyle so she could fund her trips abroad. She’s visited more than 50 countries.
“I’d just go,” she says. “I’d go and live in Nepal for three months or Buenos Aires for a couple of months. Then I’d go back to Taos and work on art.”
Her most recent expedition, in 2020, was to the Orient Point Lighthouse off the New York coast, where she spent three weeks as the 122-year-old structure’s first artist-in-residence.
“It was crazy. I was alone with my dog in a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean for weeks. I was the first person to actually live in it in over 100 years.”
Currier finds inspiration in diversity. Her subjects are from a wide array of ethnic backgrounds and cultures. But within that diversity, there are commonalities.
“An element that’s been very important to me these past few years is what unites us as humans. It’s such a contentious, divisive time. At the same time I’ve seen, from traveling all over the world, how much the same we all are. Everybody goes through the same challenges, and they go through the same triumphs, too.”
details
▼ Erin Currier: Passion, Pathos, and the Human Potential
▼ On view through Oct. 2
▼ Blue Rain Gallery, 544 S. Guadalupe St., 505-954-9902, blueraingallery.com