Erica Duryea
January 13- February 17, 2022

GLOW OF LIFE
acrylic
14 x 11
​2021

Artist Statement
I view my work as an intuitive process of tapping into layers of experience with elements both physical and metaphysical, and conveying that experience through bold color, texture, and dynamic strokes, creating an alluring world which invites the viewer to step inside.  This painting is titled GLOW OF LIFE and is part of a body of work that I created to embody the experience that is available to us when we surrender to our senses and perceptions of the natural world around us and the inner world of our own being, while allowing the exploration of the unseen and intangible.  This is what I am most drawn to explore in my work- the concept that there are complex and layered dimensions to our experience of life and the natural world, and that if we practice openness, stillness and tuning in, we can gain access to entirely new worlds of perception and intuition that exist in and alongside our daily surroundings.   I experience this work as a moving meditation of receiving and expressing simultaneously, inhabiting the space where the natural and supernatural intermingle.

Artist Bio
Erica Duryea is a professional artist from Montauk, New York.  She earned her Bachelor's Degree in Studio Art and Art History from Wake Forest University, North Carolina.  Her studio training was focused in abstract oil painting, with a secondary focus in sculpture and printmaking.  She fell in love with painting as a mechanism to create new worlds that give the viewer an experience of depth and entry to these worlds.  She was drawn specifically to abstract painting for its limitless potential for nuanced and untethered expression of elements beyond the tangible.  She has always been magnetically drawn to nature environments such as forests and the sea, and having lived in coastal settings in both Montauk and the west coast of Ireland, she finds strong inspiration for her work in exploring the relationship between natural elements such as seawater, plantlife, wind and rain and the metaphysical forces of energy and spirituality that she perceives through and around them.  She utilizes her experience in sculpture and printmaking to suffuse her paintings with an abundance of texture and dynamic marks made by various tools, applying paint and other mixed media in a multitude of overlapping layers.  Her works on canvas range from small to quite large- the immediacy of her process lends itself best to larger surfaces, but she relishes the contrast of working at a smaller scale. 
She lives in Brooklyn, NYC with her husband from Ireland and their two young children.

She is inspired by 
Melanie Daniel
Erika b Hess
Michelle Blade
Alicia Reyes McNamara
Erin Eastabrooks
Aimee Parrott
Shara Hughes
Emma Larsson

​See more of Erica's work on Instagram @erica_duryea_artworks

smallärt
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@Soldier's Field 

Gibbs & 6th Ave SW
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​Rochester, MN
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Introducing the second smallärt featuring work made through Community Education
​Northrop Building, Rochester, MN

The funding period is over for this grant. I am in the process of securing a federal non-profit status. We have a MN non-profit status and will continue placing smallärts around Rochester.



​My Inclusion directive is as follows: more women, more BIPOC, more LGBTQ+, more combinations of all of those above, more textiles, clay and other work the Western Canon of art deemed "craft" or "primitive", more conversations about art, more curiosity and more art everywhere.

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