Natalie Erickson
Natalie Erickson - Three Series in Miniature.
Natalie Erickson is an artist based in Portland who makes incredible miniature oil paintings. For this new solo show she has made three distinct and meaningful series.
And Death Comes For Us All
Through miniature still lives of skulls, decaying flowers and dead birds Natalie speaks to our inevitable mortality as the great unifier of a deeply divided humanity. We are currently in especially tumultuous times in terms of great social, spiritual and political division and this series calls to attention the fact that in death and decay we are all the same. On the journey to this inescapable destination the choice of whether you arrive as a beautiful individual or an ugly one is entirely yours to make.
Let’s Play Men
Natalie’s miniature portraits of action figures explore the idea of manufactured and prescribed masculinity. In our modern reality we know that the spectrum of gender identity is much broader than the relics of our childhood might suggest, and that those lines are becoming ever more blurred. In direct response to this social progression there is a wave of genera rigidity that belongs to a not-too-distant era in which these roles were much more clearly defined. The action figures of our youth are a great vehicle for exploring the notion of how people who grew up playing with them were expected to behave and who they may have become.
Queers of the Court
In these beautiful, renaissance influenced, depictions of members of the queer community the artist is presenting individuals in a way which portrays their individuality rather than viewing them through a lens of stereotype. In response to her frustration at the often overly sexualized or commodified way in which people are often presented, and the idea that their actual personality can be overlooked through intense emphasis on their sexual orientation or gender identity as the primary distinguishing factor.
Natalie Erickson is an artist based in Portland who makes incredible miniature oil paintings. For this new solo show she has made three distinct and meaningful series.
And Death Comes For Us All
Through miniature still lives of skulls, decaying flowers and dead birds Natalie speaks to our inevitable mortality as the great unifier of a deeply divided humanity. We are currently in especially tumultuous times in terms of great social, spiritual and political division and this series calls to attention the fact that in death and decay we are all the same. On the journey to this inescapable destination the choice of whether you arrive as a beautiful individual or an ugly one is entirely yours to make.
Let’s Play Men
Natalie’s miniature portraits of action figures explore the idea of manufactured and prescribed masculinity. In our modern reality we know that the spectrum of gender identity is much broader than the relics of our childhood might suggest, and that those lines are becoming ever more blurred. In direct response to this social progression there is a wave of genera rigidity that belongs to a not-too-distant era in which these roles were much more clearly defined. The action figures of our youth are a great vehicle for exploring the notion of how people who grew up playing with them were expected to behave and who they may have become.
Queers of the Court
In these beautiful, renaissance influenced, depictions of members of the queer community the artist is presenting individuals in a way which portrays their individuality rather than viewing them through a lens of stereotype. In response to her frustration at the often overly sexualized or commodified way in which people are often presented, and the idea that their actual personality can be overlooked through intense emphasis on their sexual orientation or gender identity as the primary distinguishing factor.
