Featured Artist: Erin Willett

by AddISON WHEELER

Juxtaposed against the ironically flashy, imagist, and contemporary works so prevalent in the art community today, Erin Willett’s bleak, surrealist landscapes stand out for their blatant simplicity and attention to stark imagery rather then painstaking detail. A senior Painting and Printmaking major and Sculpture minor, Willett has worked with everything from oil paint and charcoal to screen printing ink. Her main focus, however, is the abstract, almost dystopian landscape painting that is definitive of her style.

“I really like working with landscapes,” Willett says. “The subject, the visual field, of the work is non-object and thus must be shown without the use of object.” Willett is inspired by music, and often paints in rhythm with what she is listening to, which ranges from atmospheric post-metal like Godspeed You Black Emperor to hardcore punk like Icons of Filth and Discharge. The depressing and disconnected nature of darker music helps fuel the themes of isolation dealt with in the landscapes. “This interest in isolation comes from the idea of every human truly being isolated within their own bodies, minds, and history,” says Willett of her work. “Because of this unavoidable solitude, every person reaches out to others in efforts of communication.” In a world where art is becoming marginalized as a flashy, commercial commodity, Willett’s art strikes a chord of discontent that reverberates as darkly as the color in her landscapes.