LaMontagne Gallery is pleased to present a selection of recent paintings by Erika Wastrom. With these works, Wastrom continues to explore her singular approach to figuration, employing a variety of painterly materials to create works drawing from memory, art history, found objects, friends and neighbors. With a studied sense of composition and disorienting palette, the works lull then jolt. Seemingly casual marks placed within fields of colors set off a cascade of connotations, both unexpected and familiar.
Her figures appear alone, wrapped up in the day to day. The repair truck, an unsuccessful clamming trip, a school lesson: these offer the opportunity to explore the textures and compositions of everyday life, a place where the important can be tossed off without a second thought, and only the inconsequential is truly meaningful. In short, the paintings are an opportunity for both artist and viewer to pause and consider how strange it is to be a person.
These works comprise a fractured portrait of nature, community, and moments of solitude in and around Wastrom’s home on Cape Cod. By positioning her figures within the material trappings of their everyday lives, Wastrom picks up the mantle of paintings as both metaphor and social register—a conversation harkening back to the days of Bruegel, Rembrandt, and the still-life artists of the Dutch Golden Age. But with her irreverently stylized treatment of her bodies, she renders places and moments that are distinctly her own.