About the Art
What the artist saysI use paper, with its ubiquity, ephemerality, and lack of intrinsic value, because it can be transformed from the ordinary to the extraordinary through the application of paint, the cutting of shapes, and in combination with other papers.
Why we like itErin mixes found materials and shapes with contemporary painting to connect and collaborate. We love the way she composes her works, finding beauty in reconstruction by creating new forms and layers with color and paper.
Where we hang itHang Erin’s work anywhere you can get up close to see the complexities of her layered materials.
About the Artist
Erin McCluskey Wheeler
Erin McCluskey Wheeler is a painter, collagist, writer, curator, and teacher based in the San Francisco area. Her work is all about reinvention and restoration: she cuts up, groups and rearranges her paintings on paper and found papers in a process of transformation. She is interested in the materiality and weight of paper, the surfaces it leaves behind when torn and removed, and the way colors can evoke memories of people and place. Erin approaches her work almost as a restorer - completing shapes that have been cut, finding the forms under the layers, and matching the colors found. This way of working is a direct result of Erin’s experience as a caretaker for both her parents with early onset dementia. As her parents’ sense of self, autonomy, and connection to the world got smaller and more fragmented, Erin found beauty in reconstruction and in the careful placement of small things.“I like to think that my dad and I were maybe on the same roads; traveling across time and space and riding together on highways made of glitter and possibility.”