Still life with birdhouse oil on board 2010 24 x 24 inches
Erin Raedeke’s still lifes of domestic detritus bring to mind the cliche of when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Of course, having a child is an event to be celebrated but all too often it can slow or halt the work of even the best of painters. Rather than letting it limit her Erin seems to make child rearing central to both her painting and her life. Reminds me of how another painter, Katy Schneider did a similar thing using her children and family life as her main subject matter. However, Erin likes to paint what might sit still for a bit and we don’t yet see the children themselves. Instead we see are like a flurry of afterimages, where the child was just playing before moving on to the next thrill. We get to watch Mom carefully picking up each item and considering where to put it, how to best put it away.
For now she celebrates the exuberant colors of birthday candles, plastic toys, chocolate bunnys, half eaten sandwiches, piles of laundry or children’s drawings – wherever there might be new delightfully inventive discoveries of color arrangements that capture her formal interest. Erin states she paints from observation and in an email she told me “I’ve been focusing on the still life for the past couple of years – I have a three year old daughter and the still life fits into my schedule a little more easily than the landscape, although I do hope to get back to the landscape in the future.”
Erin is in two shows coming up this July, one at the Gross McCleaf gallery in Philly and another one at the Washington Art Association in Washington Depot, Connecticut
Laundry (Click for larger view)
Erin Raedeke said in her artist statement on her website:
” I paint in a turn of the century house where I live with my husband. We live a couple hours drive from Washington and Baltimore. The town is simple, no frills. I am interested in the routes and landmarks I encounter during my weekly routines and the pathways my mind has taken throughout my life. Always painting from observation, I use paint to help me find my location physically within an architectural space, the hours of the day, or a particular time of year and emotionally within a family, a community, and the long tradition of painting”
Erin recieved her BFA at the Indiana University in Bloomington, IN and also Studied the figure and landscape
under Mark Karnes at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
You can see more of Erin Raedeke’s painting on her website. Here are a number of her more recent paintings and a select few of her past works (in no particular order) Larger versions can be seen on most of these by clicking the image.
Still life with marbles oil on board 2010 12 x 16 inches
Still Life with Animals oil on board 2010 12 x 16inches
Still life with chocolate bunny oil on board 2010 12 x 16 inches
Still Life with Elsa’s Drawing oil on board 2010 12 x 16 inches
still life with plastic egg
studio view with snow 40 x 38 inches
still life with marshmallows oil on canvas 2010 18 x 22 inches
View from Martinsburg Train Station 2007 oil on board 14 x 25 inches
Birthday 2008 oil on linen 35 x 32 inches
Breakfast 2009 oil on board 12 x 12 inches
Interior with Fake Flowers 2007 oil on canvas 50 x 46 inches
Painting Perceptions was started in 2009 by Larry Groff to promote the ideas, practice and experience of painters working from observation in a modernist vein from around the world through interviews, essays, videos and community. It later evolved to include imagination-based and abstract painting as well.
Beautiful work. Her sense of light and air is wonderful, as is, the subject matter. Being in the midst of child-rearing myself, I enjoy the sense of honesty and playfullness of what she paints. I’ll be in Philly in a couple of weeks, so I hope to catch her show at Gross McCleaf. Thanks again Larry!
Yes, like these too, especially the still life and the big interior.
Nice sense of discovery in the patterning and color in her super-informal arrangements. The still lives made me smile.
I also have a house full of kids who never let me paint. Her paintings look like very similar scenes around my home. And I’m also forced to do more still lifes and less landscapes lately. Beautiful work.
I really like the way she has a refreshingly different approach to her subjects and handling of paint, edges and color. Anyone who has had kids around can appreciate these still lifes with their apparent chaos as a kind of narrative of moments of family life. I hope she gets a show in the Boston area so I can see her work for real.
would love to know how she manages to produce such brilliantly controlled colors. This artist has great technical skills, obvious in her ability to make the ordinary lifestyle so gorgeous.
Erin, beautiful work!
Erin’ work is always so beautiful, and intriguing….that girl can push paint!
One of my absolute favorites is “Laundry”. Great work, Erin!
This work is really lovely and as most people have stated it’s fun that she has chosen to look at her children’s things as a source of inspiration. And what you’ve written, Larry, about the difficulty of painting with children, I find to be very true. As a new father (actually i’m an old hand now at 9 months in), i’m really impressed with the fact that she is able to do such lovely work and also do her parent job as well. As Paula says, her color control is very nice and the pattern plays are wonderful. I hope she has success at her shows and look forward to seeing more work.