Interview

May 22

Erica Sutherland

Erica Sutherland is originally from Katy, Texas and resides in Oak Cliff with her husband, two daughters, and a feisty little dog named Ralph. As an artist, her recent experimental abstract works are made with a mixture of materials including everything from acrylic, paper, pastels, and charcoal to less conventional mediums like bleach and cosmetics. If it can make a mark or exist on a two-dimensional surface, it is fair game in her work. Erica’s art career began over twenty years ago in Lubbock as a life drawing and printmaking student at Texas Tech University before she was thrust suddenly into motherhood in 2005. The journey of being a single mother, artist, and college student took her home to University of Houston before ultimately graduating with a BFA in Painting and Drawing at the University of Arlington in 2009 thanks to the unwavering support from an incredible network of family and friends.

She has previously worked as an intern at Valley House Gallery and exhibited work in the Heights neighborhood of Houston. Her greatest source of pride amid the tumultuous and relentless pursuit of her art degree was being able to share the experience with her oldest daughter. It is of note that this period also caused a seismic shift in her method which remains prevalent in her work today. Ultimately, Erica’s artistic endeavors were put on an extended hiatus as she raised her first child who is now entering adulthood and going off to college herself. In this time, she has grown her family and pursued a successful career that started in automotive and ended in ad tech. She is now focused primarily on her family and sharing her art with the community out of Studio E at Art on Main Gallery in Dallas, Texas.

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What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?

“My journey in the art world started very young, my father is a gifted musician and in his youth had an incredible mastery of the craft of drawing, though he would never admit that. The free time we did get to spend together when he wasn't absorbed in his music or working was spent reading and teaching me to draw. He gave me many lessons in drawing proper proportions of the face, and the affinity I had for drawing people and the human figure carried on with me through college when I pursued a BFA in drawing and printmaking at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, ultimately graduating from the University of Texas at Arlington with a BFA in painting and drawing. An only child, I always had a safe place to create thanks to my mother. She was my earliest fan and always incredibly supportive of my creative endeavors. From my father I drew creativity and from my her I gained the confidence, support, and drive to keep going, no matter what. That drive and support really saved me as I abruptly entered motherhood while in college. This period in my life was definitely disruptive, tumultuous, and filled with uncertainty, resulting in a seismic shift in my way of working. My priorities changed. I questioned whether I could still actually be an artist, a student, and a single mother, and my work reflected that. I had to work quickly, I didn't have the time or the focus any longer for technical detail and my art became much more expressive and abstract.
Ultimately it would be another three years before I finally earned my degree, and getting to experience that with my oldest daughter in tow is still one of my greatest sources of pride. Ultimately, I took about a fifteen year artistic hiatus raising her and pursuing a career that started in automotive and ended in tech. Now a stay at home mother of another young child while sending her oldest off to college, my return to the art world has picked up right where I left off all those years ago, despite having lived what feels like an entire lifetime in between. As a woman, mother, wife, and artist, it is an incredible honor to share my creativity with my family, friends, and community after stepping away from it for so long.”

What does your work aim to say? Does it comment on any current social or political issues?

“In early experimental works, I utilized bleach and lipstick on collage papers to create layered collage drawings, which really spoke to me in terms of the materials used. I took something societally and stereotypically associated with women - cleaning supplies and cosmetics - and searched for ways to still make something creative, meaningful, and beautiful. As a young woman struggling to balance supporting my newfound family of two, I questioned my ability to still maintain my identity as an artist. Could I do both? We live in a world that does not always play well with the needs of women and mothers, and the destruction of materials that were being frantically pieced together again and again spoke to me. It mimicked my life. Aspects of my upbringing and adolescence were difficult, and I often felt like I was desperately trying to keep it all together before things fell apart again. I always found a way to persevere, though. In the face of adverse and at times destructive forces I prided myself in being able to build myself back up and adapt. My work feels like it captures that moment in time when things do, in fact, come together. Each piece is a breath, a meditative pause that contemplates the trauma or anxiety leading up to that magical moment when you emerge in tact and ready for the next challenge.
Does my work comment on politics? Indirectly, yes. Given the current political climate which has seen challenges to reproductive rights and women's health in the US especially, I definitely think there's an emerging political undertone in my work that I did not expect to become so relevant. In my eyes, it makes it even more important to elevate my artistic voice as a woman and a mother who fears for the future of her daughters. All that said, I am hopeful for the future and what it brings but we have got to do the work to ensure that it is a bright one.”

Do you plan your work in advance, or is it improvisation?

“My work is a little of both. For example, I began Resilience not long after losing my grandmother, and it remained unfinished for a while as I processed that loss and considered mortality. In my mind I held the concept of things that come in waves; grief and creativity. Both can ebb and flow and overwhelm in between periods of calm or joy. I took this concept and allowed it to influence the initial color palette I was working with, but the way the work actually came together in terms of composition and imagery is definitely highly improvisational and reactive in the moment. I do a lot of spontaneous arranging and rearranging and layering before a piece will effectively come together. I resumed work on Resilience as a friend was diagnosed with breast cancer, which took a relatively quiet and monotone piece to a richer and more vibrant place. A place of triumph, and of hope. Grief, fear of loss, and mortality are complex. Take grief, for example. Grief can be perceived as a negative emotion, but coming to a place of healing it is something I now have gratitude for. Grief is experiencing the loss of something treasured. Nothing lasts forever, but to have had love for someone or something wonderful is something for which we should have deep gratitude. Emerging from a period in which you have faced your own mortality in particular, even more so.”

“My art is deeply meaningful to me as it is with most artists. Getting to return to art today after the way I left it many years ago is just such a gift.”

Are there any art world trends you are following?

“I am particularly interested in what I am seeing in terms of textured art and fluid art. A lot of my work has a very geode like quality, and I do a lot of work with bleach and water prior to actually adding paint or pastels into the process. I would absolutely love to start incorporating different textural and fluid methods into the way I work. I think those tools in and of themselves create some spectacular effects, but I don't want to abandon my process either. I would love to incorporate them more and create more complex pieces on a larger scale.”

What process, materials and techniques do you use to create your artwork?

“I start my work with curating hand dyed and handmade papers, mulberry and lokta paper are really fun to work with. Hand dyed paper lets go of color when bleached in a really spectacular way. I typically start with alternating between different ways of using washes and drips as well as accidental spills of bleach on paper and tearing the natural shapes that form along spill lines. I then start to arrange things in a way I feel starts to tell a story or resonate with me and allow them to dry before using a medium like mod podge to tack them all down. At this point I will usually apply a UV coat to help preserve the color and minimize fading. Once this dries, I come back in with additive methods leaning most heavily on acrylic and iridescent acrylics, liquid leaf, charcoal, or pastels to push the piece over the finish line. The collage is most often my way of creating an underpainting or composition upon which I can really start working. If I am lucky it happens a single time, but often I'll end up layering or repeating the process until I achieve the results I am looking for.”

What does your art mean to you?

“My art is deeply meaningful to me as it is with most artists. Getting to return to art today after the way I left it many years ago is just such a gift. Today, my art means that I can tell the young, scared woman I left behind when I found out I was going to become a mother that she made it. Everything is okay. You did it. You didn't lose yourself, you became so much more. Most of all though, I get to tell her she is not only okay, but thriving. I just have so much gratitude, it is truly evidence and a celebration of a life lived.”

What’s your favourite artwork and why?

“This one is easy for me, and it is not something hanging in a museum or well known. It is without a doubt a portrait my father drew of me in his sketchbook when I was a newborn. I always marveled at it, it is an absolutely simple and delicate drawing of me sleeping in my crib. Every detail is just perfect, and it captures a moment in time when everything was quiet, and I was being looked at with love in a peaceful moment by my dad. This is a man who was dealt a really tough deck of cards as a young man in terms of everything he faced, and he turned deeply into art and music as a means to sustain himself. It is the one place where he truly, truly shines. He is whole and confident with a guitar in his hands. He is incredibly talented, and that isn't always found or met with the acclaim it deserves but it does exist embedded in our every day lives. Greatness is sometimes quietly hiding all around us. Unfortunately the sketchbook was lost many years ago, but the image of that drawing is burned into my brain forever. It will always and forever be my favorite piece of art. I have always really taken to artwork by artists around me, there's absolute magic that you get to witness in having a relationship with the artist and watching them create that really inspires me more than anything else in the world.”