Erin Lawlor
Erin Lawlor is a British nonfigurative painter whose work explores the physical and gestural possibilities of oil paint. Rooted in a deep fascination with the materiality of paint, Lawlor’s practice reflects an enduring dialogue with the Renaissance concept of paint as skin, a notion that has shaped her evolution from figurative to abstract painting. Educated at Paris-Sorbonne University, where she earned a BA in History of Art in 1992, Lawlor has developed a distinctive visual language characterised by sweeping, undulating brushstrokes that ripple across the canvas like waves or currents. Her wet-into-wet technique, applied with fluid gestures, allows colour and movement to merge organically, creating a sense of momentum. Over time, she has shifted to working on a larger scale, painting with her canvases laid flat on the ground, an approach that engages her entire body in the act of creation. Her practice resonates with a lineage of abstract paintings, yet she carves her own space through a distinct emphasis on the physical and chromatic anatomy of paint itself.
She writes:
‘Painting is for me a fertile place of prospection, a vector for the otherwise inexpressible. Working essentially in oil, occasionally in ink, beyond the physical presence of the works and the apparent gestural brushwork, an internal logic establishes itself, the paintwork condenses and unites, not so much a duplication as a translation of the sensitive that uses the ductile and resistant character of the paint itself. Each work bears in effect the echo of a movement, a fold or an unfolding, a sort of supple stratification of the texture itself. The works may be read as making allusion to geology, the enlargement of a floral detail or the memory of an enigmatic image referring to micro or macrocosm, at a fragile point of equilibrium between control and the accidental, fusion and a possible engulfing. The resulting images settle into paradigms, if not abstract (the reference to a life-form or reality is never far from the surface) they aspire to the abstract, being a condensation or summarisation of a subjective experience of reality.’
