Erin Fitzpatrick
Erin Fitzpatrick is an artist known for her colorful and patterned portrait paintings. On paper, she includes things like attending the Maryland Institute College of Art in her native Baltimore City, a residency at Vermont Studio Center, publications in magazines from New American Paintings to Cosmopolitan, paintings for the likes of former VP Kamala Harris, Martha Stewart, Ringo Starr, Airbnb, a list of solo and group exhibitions, and hundreds of portrait commissions for private clients around the world. In reality, Fitzpatrick doesn’t dwell on credentials, preferring to spend her free time walking the streets of Mexico City, experimenting with new materials and themes in her work, reading, cooking, traveling, studying Spanish, and learning about her endless list of curiosities like all things esoteric, the histories and traditions of regional craft, folklore, or whatever is her current obsession du jour. She will take absurdity over cool or trending any day of the week and welcomes opportunities to be acquainted with the mysterious and the magical.
Artist Statement
Before leaving to start a family, my mother was a Catholic nun living in a convent. My early years were full of traditional (and sometimes not-so-traditional) religion and spiritual practices: church school, speaking in tongues, eating the body and drinking the blood. While I found some of these accepted practices to be pretty far out or even scary, things like tarot cards and astrology were strictly forbidden, categorized with the concept of the devil. Maybe it’s because of this that I have always had an interest in the occult, syncretistic religions (where religions of colonizers and indigenous traditions intertwine), folklore, and the esoteric. It is about exploring my own consciousness as well as observing how people from different backgrounds and perspectives connect with something bigger than themselves.
All three of the paintings that I submitted for Spirit World were painted at different times when I was in Mexico City. It’s where I’ve learned about Santa Muerte, Día de Muertos, La Virgen de Guadalupe, and visited the Santería market. It’s a place where many people truly believe that there is a time of year when the veil is so thin that a connection can be made with the other side. It’s a place where candles are burned, plant medicine is used, Milagros are left, and people whisper about brujería. I didn’t set out intentionally to only submit paintings from my time there, but it didn’t surprise me when that’s how things came to be.
The painting Quiromancia features a still life of objects that I collected or made; the hands and the jaguar are persistent symbols in CDMX. Hey Van Gogh It’s the Same As It Ever Was was painted from a skeleton at Mexico City’s Medical Museum and is a nod to Van Gogh’s smoking skull painting and the idea that everything is and always will be. Finally, The Sage was inspired by the Santería initiates wandering the streets in white. I don’t always wish to cross to the other side of some of these mysteries, but I am enlivened by their symbolic presence that sometimes makes them known in my daily life.
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