Erin Lawlor is known for her masterly use of oils ‘alla-prima’ and her palette of juicy bright and sombre dark colours. She is capable of transcribing the sum of moments into lines, forms and colours with a single movement of the broom-like brush she is using. Erin Lawlor’s relation to the canvas becomes intensely physical as the creation of a single painting assumes the form of documentation of the artist’s work process. Erin Lawlor’s works constitute the record and the sum of movements translated into the dynamics of oil colours on canvas.

Brushmark

The suite of moments that builds up to a single brushmark brings also the volume into the otherwise flat surface of the mould-made paper in Erin Lawlor’s first etching project. A fragile point of equilibrium between control and the accidental form together a moment frozen in time and yet it feels like it is reenacted by the spectator time after time.

An Open Image

The paper sheet becomes a cast of the grooves and indentations of Erin Lawlor’s etched plate when it ran through an etching press.The contrast between the bright and the dark areas transforms the negative space of the background into a sculptural interplay between solid form and emptiness. Thus the single gesture of Erin Lawlor’s experienced hand introduces light into darkness and space into flat support. The result is a fundamentally open image that aspires to signify rather than show.

Erin Lawlor herself prefers to define her work as non-figurative rather than abstract as she shares, the American scientist, David Bohm’s idea of a never static or complete reality seeing it rather as an unending process of movement and unfoldment.

Erin Lawlor, born 1969, Epping, UK. Lives and works in London, UK. She received a BA from University of Paris IV – La Sorbonne, Paris (FR). Erin Lawlor’s recent exhibitions include Invincible Summer, Wellington Arch, London (UK), earthly delights, Vigo Gallery, London (UK), entre chien et loup, Luca Tommasi Arte Contemporanea, Milan (IT). Erin Lawlor’s work is included in the collections of New Hall Art Collection, Cambridge (UK), The Mark Rothko Art Centre, Daugavpils (LV).

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Like in the work of Erin Lawlor the artist's gesture is also at the core of Ruth Campau's monoprint project This Moment for You.