In her paintings Erika interweaves lines, colours and materials creating a wide fresco of ungraspable thoughts and emotions. Her visual poems combine a sense of melancholy, peace and freedom.
Erika Page Guillory is a Georgia-based artist. After studying nursing, in 2010 she started taking professional art classes and since then she has continued being true to her real passion that became her job: painting. The many exhibitions she has participated to in Georgia, made her a well-known artist in the state.
It is fair to say that her carrier as an artist started earlier than in the 2010s. While working in hospitals and with patients, Erika has gathered a big emotional burden that needed to be expressed. To her own memories and experiences she has added those of the people she took care of. The past as a nurse has allowed her to create a vocabulary of emotions according to which she has elaborated her own visual language.
In Broken and Beautiful as well as in Bud and Bloom lighter tones emerge from a dark background as if from the chaos and darkness of memory a sparkle of hope shines through. In the upper part of Broken and Beautiful big pink clouds give a reassuring feeling that is contrasted by the black drops, which resemble tears, and darker colours in the lower part. The title itself, Broken and beautiful, suggests a duality, a presence and an absence, pain and solace. This duality is a constant characteristic in her work and it is enhanced by the powerful brushstrokes and thickness of the wax applied to the canvas which also gives depths to the whole.
In Erika’s works every line, choice of colour and material is charged with meaning and energy. Every detail is carefully calculated and every action on the canvas is purposeful. The expressive drips, scratched lines and scribbles suggest Cy Twombly as one of Erika’s great teachers. The similarities reside not only in the technique but also in the drive to expose what is known and hint to the unknown. The fact though that Cy Twombly painted on white or colourful backgrounds, while Erika’s colours can only emerge from dark backgrounds, entails a radical change of perspective.
From the light, to the dark and back to the light again, Erika’s paintings are a journey of the soul that, like the one of the bud that becomes a bloom, is slow and vulnerable. In Bud and Bloom flowers with long stalks are born from the dark matter and stretch towards the light, freeing themselves and looking for redemption.
Art can be social, political or can deal with existential questions. Erika’s art doesn’t have such a narrative yet it does have one which is that of sharing, caring and connecting.
Thank you to Erika Guillory Page.
Source: https://erikaguillorypage.com/
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