John Greiner-Ferris Studio
  • Home
  • About
  • Portfolio
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Paintings & Drawings
  • Riding Shotgun
  • Home
  • About
  • Portfolio
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Paintings & Drawings
  • Riding Shotgun
Search

Provincetown Banner:  Erika Wastrom paints the world she knows

9/11/2019

0 Comments

 
Every artist has to eat. A lot of artists teach. I continue with my established career of using two of my artistic talents for monetary gain: writing about and photographing the things that I care about. One of the things I do is string for the art editor of the Provincetown Banner, interviewing (but I shy away from that word; I tell them that we're just going to talk) and photographing the artists that either live on Cape Cod, or come through for other reasons.
Picture
Erika Wastrom paints the world she knows
By John Greiner-Ferris / Banner Correspondent
Posted Jul 18, 2019 at 4:33 PM

Artists are often advised to seek out subject matter close to home, to deeply explore the things of which they already have profound personal knowledge and understanding. It’s advice that is often ignored, so it is refreshing to walk into West Barnstable painter Erika Wastrom’s little barn studio and be treated to some very intimate, slightly abstracted, colorful paintings, all about 16 inches square or so, of the things and people that make up her life.

These are paintings she is pulling together for her upcoming show at Gaa Gallery, which will open this Friday alongside the work of Jane Corrigan. They will appear in Gaa’s Provincetown Project Space, a smaller gallery well-suited for the scale of her work.
Wastrom is busy. She has a busy, thoughtful mind that spins and charges, stops short, nearly throwing the rider, then she nimbly changes directions, bumping into herself on the way back, before tearing off in a completely different direction. On this particular day, along with her show, she’s also busy shepherding her two toddlers.

It’s definitely a family thing at her cedar-shake homestead, which sits on the edge of a marsh, set back from the road on the Old King’s Highway. Wastrom’s boat- builder father, Bob, was minding the boys. He then handed them along to her husband, Dan, who runs a landscaping company and rearranged his schedule so that an interview could take place — an interview about Wastrom being a Cape Cod painter and juggling the roles of artist, wife and mother.

A few points to know about Wastrom’s earlier years: She is a 13th-generation Cape Codder, claiming that title back to Constance Hopkins and the Mayflower. (“It’s no big deal,” she says, offhandedly. “There are a lot of us.”) Outer Cape artists Jim Peters and Vicky Tomayko were her teachers at the Lighthouse Charter School. She concentrated in ceramics at Alfred University, where, if anything, she gained an appreciation for surface and an interest in objects. Some of her more productive, formative years came as a grad student at Boston University, or, as some of the women artists called it, BU: Big and Ugly, in reference to the big-ass paintings that were in vogue there at the time. “It wasn’t who I was at all, and it was then that I started painting small,” Wastrom says. “At first, I was nervous, and I thought I’d be ripped apart in my critiques. But I think if I’ve got something big to say, it will come through even if the painting is small.”

And in the end, size mattered less than attitude. “It was at BU where I became more comfortable with myself and my perspective,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to make serious work, and I constantly ask myself, ‘What do I have to say?’ If my paintings don’t have purpose, what’s the point to them?”

It was also at BU that her work caused a fight between her professors. Is it whimsical? If it is, so what? What’s wrong with whimsical? “I like these intimate views,” Wastrom says, looking around at her studio. “I like that they’re small. There’s something about them that is reminiscent of illustrations. They could be a page from a children’s book.”
John Walker, under whom Wastrom studied at BU, told her just to go in the studio and make things. “He’d say, ‘Don’t overthink it.’ If you can let go of being self-conscious, that’s when something interesting happens.”

She’s been painting almost exclusively on paper for about 10 years. “I love paper, because the surface of the paper is fragile, but the surface also does things that canvas and panels can’t do,” she says. “I’m always accessing Matisse,” she adds. “Color holds air within the flat space.”

Wastrom doesn’t consider herself a regional artist. “These aren’t Cape Cod paintings,” she says. “I do think my colors come from the Cape. If you walk the beach at dusk, the sand is a muted neon. If you really look, you’ll see that. But I’m not dealing with Cape Cod. I’m dealing with being a wife and a mother. There are a lot of myths about being an artist and being a mother and an artist. I want to have it all.”

She paints when her kids nap in the afternoon and when they sleep at night. And given her time constraints, the smaller size format makes sense. She thinks of the 84-year-old British painter, Rose Wylie. “I’m looking forward to being an old lady,” Wastrom says.

https://provincetown.wickedlocal.com/entertainment/20190718/erika-wastrom-paints-world-she-knows

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    John Greiner-Ferris is an artist in the Boston area. Sometimes he makes images. Sometimes he writes. Sometimes he does both.

    Archives

    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019

    Categories

    All
    2020
    2022
    Abstract
    Abstract Image
    Abstract Painting
    Acrylic Painting
    Ai Weiwei
    Amy Barrett
    An Artist's Life
    Art And Poetry
    Art During Covid 19
    Art During Covid-19
    Art During Social Distancing
    Art In The Time Of Covid-19
    Art In The Time Of Social Distancing
    Art In The Time Of The Coronavirus
    Art Is Not Precious
    Beard And Weil Galleries
    Boston Artist
    Boston Painter
    Boston Photographer
    Brewster
    Cape Cod
    Cape Cod Bay
    Collage
    Color
    Color In Motion
    Conceptual Art
    Contemporary Art
    Contemporary Art Dealer
    Contemporary Artist
    Contemporary Landscape
    Contemporary Landscape × Contemporary Photographer × Landscape × #wip × Work In Progress
    Contemporary Landscape × Contemporary Photographer × Landscape × #wip × Work In Progress
    Contemporary Photographer
    Contemporary Photography
    Coronavirus
    Curated Fridge
    Curated Fridge Summer 2021 Show
    Dave DeWitt
    Dave's Greens
    Daylgith Savings Time
    Fine Arts Photographer
    Geraniums
    Graffiti Art
    Harvesters
    High Speed
    Highway
    John Greiner Ferris
    John Greiner-Ferris
    Just Kids
    Landscape
    Low Light
    Lunar Eclipse
    Mants Landing
    Massachusetts
    Massachusetts Artist
    May 16
    Memory
    Michele And Donald D'Amour Museum Of Fine Arts
    Microscope
    Microscopic Images
    Mixed Medi
    Mixed Media
    Moderism
    Modern Art
    Modern Landscape
    Multi-media
    Mutli-disciplinarty Artist
    New Year
    Night Photography
    Noh Theater
    Noh Theatrre
    Norton
    Organic
    Organic Farm
    Organic Farming
    Oyster Farming
    Oysters
    Painting
    Painting During The Pandemic
    Patti Smith
    PH21
    Photograhy
    Portugal
    Provincetown
    Provincetown Banner
    Quincy Painter
    Razor Clams
    Robert Mapplethorpe
    Sandwich
    Self-portrait
    SoWa Artist
    Spring
    Springfield Art Museum
    Springfield Museum
    Sprouting Garlic
    Street Art
    Sustainability
    Tennessee Williams
    Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival
    Text Based Paintings
    Text-based Paintings
    The Artist's Life
    Theater
    The Creative Process
    The Lady Aoi
    The Night Of The Iguana
    Time-lapse Photography
    Truro
    Urban Landscape
    Urban Landscape Photography
    Washi Paper
    Wheaton College
    #wip
    Wollaston
    Work In Progress

    RSS Feed

HOME
ABOUT
PORTFOLIO
CONTACT
BLOG
PAINTINGS & DRAWINGS
Picture
All images copyright © John Greiner-Ferris
  • Home
  • About
  • Portfolio
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Paintings & Drawings
  • Riding Shotgun