In the Studio: Erin Parish

Artist Erin Parish (b. November 6, 1966) spent high school in downtown Detroit in a 5000 sq. ft. artists’ loft with her dad, a professor of painting at Wayne State University, and her step-mom, an art teacher in the public school system.  Both painters, they gave Erin her first studio at age 12. She also grew up with “the Susans,” her mom and her partner who shared the same name, both sculptors.

Parish went to Bennington College, majoring in art, and then on to graduate school at Queens College, all while working in the art world of New York — at galleries, museums and as an artists’ assistant in between semesters.

After many years as a professed dyed-in-the-wool figurative painter she began to paint abstractly in her late 20’s. Her earlier influences include the German Expressionists and the Neue Wilden/Neo-Expressionists.

She actively stays away from popular culture as an influence, drawn instead to the concepts of Buddhism and Wabi Sabi. Parish focuses primarily on circles as universal and planetary symbols, as they occur in nature on the scale of the microscopic and beyond.

She has had over 20 solo shows to date and been reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America, and Art News, with works held in a number of public collections.