Statement & Bio

Evoking the feel of hand-dyed garments, I paint on raw muslin with water, dyes, pigments, and other water-based mediums, creating images that exist somewhere between the tangible earthly world and the unearthly beyond.

At the heart of my artistic practice is a deliberate and open collaboration with my medium, prompting discovery in every painting. Copious amounts of water give rise to a process that embraces fluidity. As I work, forms repeatedly emerge and dissolve as the rigidity of the medium and ground is eroded. The materials, coupled with my unusual ways of using them, naturally resist whatever boundaries are placed before them. I continually seek a balance between a material’s natural movements and my willful acts of control.

All recognizable forms and figures within my work take their physical and allegorical cues from the materials and process with which they were created. Spirits, gods and monsters haunt my work yet the paintings are not narrative. In fact, the figures in my work are akin to the frame of a house: the frame is necessary, for without it the house would fall down, yet it is everything around the frame that makes the house a house. The real content of my work is found through the process and materials by which the figure emerges and ultimately finds life.

The resultant paintings are touchstones of a world that is better felt than seen. Figures within this work are semi-permeable, blurring with the environment surrounding them and refusing to recognize the separation between outside and inside, this world and the other-worldly. They are directly at odds with a society dependent on clearly defined borders to maintain order and for whom permeability and malleability are feared as disruptors of ingrained systems and structures. My work provides a glimpse of another world – one in which vulnerability is celebrated instead of shamed and fluidity is embraced as a force of strength and connection.

Loren Erdrich (b. 1978) lives and works in New York City. In 2023 Erdrich presented her first solo exhibition at SHRINE (New York, NY) following a presentation at The Armory Show in the Fall of 2022 and an online project in early 2022. She has participated in many exhibitions including Harper’s (East Hampton, NY), Spring Break Art Show (New York, NY), Nicodim Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Primary (Miami, FL), Guts Gallery (London, UK) and Wasserman Projects (Detroit, MI). Erdrich has been awarded residencies at Yaddo; Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency; Jentel Foundation; Santa Fe Art Institute; Sculpture Space; Vermont Studio Center; and Art Farm Nebraska. She frequently collaborates with the poet Sierra Nelson, coauthoring the award winning I Take Back the Sponge Cake (published by Rose Metal Press, 2012) and Isolation (limited edition artist book, 2020). Erdrich is represented by SHRINE in NYC.

IG: @okloren