Erin Stratton, Artist

Art launches + updates:

The scenery from my journey back to my art practice.

I've been on a healing journey for a while, and art is my favorite way to heal.

It gives me space to think, and the painting styles I work in were intuitively created for somatic healing. I dance, sing, finger paint and use large, flowing, sweeping movements to process things.

But for a couple of terrible years, I couldn't make art. Grief over multiple things shut me down.

Once I finally healed enough, I got the brushes back out again. As I got back to making art, I realized it is equally important for me to focus on the process of making the art as well as making it beautiful - and why that was what was healing.

1. GET MOVING

This is the first step when I get stuck - to actually move my body to defrost it.

I danced and painted and spent a lot of hours walking Avila Beach to get out of freeze state.

Girl, So Confusing

30"x40"

$1350

Favorite Sunrise

16"x20"

$600

2. ADD SPRINKLES

I'd been fighting my desire to make things shinier for a while, thinking the art wouldn't be "serious" anymore.

But it turns out, serious was not what was going to heal my heart. I needed to get back to what my inner child loved - precious stones, mica, fireplace glass, that confetti we used to stick in cards back in the 80s, broken bicycle reflectors I find while walking my dog... they're all the sprinkles

The Pink Wave

12"x12"

$400

Fire Energy

12" x 9"

$350

Finding Flow

8"x10"

$270

Add More Bling

6" x 6"

$120

A New Path

9"x12"

$300

Selenite Sprinkles

16"x20"

$800

Getting Into Crystals

9" x 12"

$350

3. TRY NEW THINGS

New materials, new techniques, new surfaces, new process, new methods... learning new things keeps me engaged.

Make It Glow

8"x24"

$600

Sculpted Energy

9" x 12"

$400

Channeling

9"x12"

$400

Depth

12" x 24"

$1000

How Smooth Can It Be?

12" x 9"

$400

Like Shattered Glass

18" x 36"

$1700

Rose Quartz, So Metal

12" x 9"

$300

Charms

6" x 6"

$120

Needlework

1.5" x 3"

$35

What If We Start In The Middle?

20" x 24"

$1750

4. RECLAIM MY PAST STYLES

When I first started painting, I worked in this swirling symbols style. I was often told that the final work looked very much like vaginas - not what I was going for at the time. This often embarrassed me, and eventually I stopped painting in this style because of the comments.

This series is me reclaiming that part of my painting story, and actually going for it - while exploring adding sculpture, and combining my styles.

While painting it, I've been mainly thinking my way through a series of identity-level transformations - who am I now, who do I want to be moving forward, where I've been masking and how I can stop. Those thoughts influenced the final designs.