Trapdoor

Erin Curtis

November 13 - December 4, 2021

Opening Reception: November 13, 4-6 pm
Closing Reception: December 4, 5-8 pm

TRAPDOOR is a new body of work by Austin artist Erin Curtis. Large cut and layered canvas paintings and small works on paper are inspired by landscapes real and imagined. Verging from idyllic to bleak, the works draw the viewer into a disorienting world of layered and disrupted patterns, high with color, but edged in darkness. The process-oriented canvases are painterly and immersive, threatening to draw the viewer down a trapdoor of disintegrating order.

Erin Curtis is an artist living and working in Austin, Texas. Her recent work is interested in geometric abstraction and its intersection with representations of nature, ornamentation and their historical roots in weaving, architecture and ritual. Curtis’s work explores utopian ideals of beauty and structure, meeting with process and the chaos of chance. Primarily working as a painter, she also creates large-scale site-specific installations and public art projects. She has received grants from the Dallas Museum of Art, the Andy Warhol Foundation, the City of Austin and the District of Columbia. She has created commissioned works for the Chicago Transit Authority, Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, City of Washington DC, Art in Embassies and The City of Austin. Curtis has attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2010 and been awarded fully funded residencies at Anderson Ranch (2012) and Vermont Studio Center (2014). In 2008-2009, Curtis was a Fulbright Scholar in Jaipur, Rajasthan. Curtis graduated from Williams College with a BA in Liberal Arts in 1999 and received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin in 2007.