Erin Tarrant - Craving Innocence
Join us to discuss the riveting and intense work of Erin Tarrant, featured in VESSEL.
Bailey Anderson: Hi there, everyone. Today I have with me Erin Tarrant, one of the artists in the show, VESSEL, open in Grant Hall Gallery from October 7th to October 18. Today, we're going to be discussing some of Erin’s paintings.
Erin, if you could describe your practice in one sentence, what would you say?
Erin Tarrant: I would say that I take situations that we can't acknowledge or ignore, and I make pictures of it. That way nobody can ignore it. They can picture exactly how it's supposed to be or how I interpret it, and I make it known.
BA: A lot of times artists work with real thick paint. In addition, I mean, you mentioned using clay and some of your two-dimensional work and there's also a three-dimensional component. You’re working with materials that have been ‘traditionally beautiful’, but then that when you're working with them, they have this really - again I’m using this word but, grotesque - this But this really kind of it's almost really coagulated and deeply textured that adds so much information to the context of the work. Do you feel that you're challenging a lot of maybe tradition in painting when it comes to using impasto and different techniques like that?
ET: I feel like I am. I've been experimenting with a lot of different mediums lately. But a lot of the combination of mediums kind of roots in that fragility in it, and the topic. I feel like the more layers, the more fragile it gets and then really gets on that base of emotion on the piece.
BA: And starting to elaborate a little bit about that, what kind of situations have inspired work like this?
ET: I'm mostly inspired by trauma in kids. Growing up and either having situations where you grow up and it's not what everybody else went through and it's normalized for you. And then you grow up and you're like, Wow, that really should be illegal. We take kids and the female body as a whole, I feel are disregarded because, you know, we're the ‘lesser amount’, apparently.
So, you know, it's one of those things where I want to make people aware of it that we're not going to be quiet about it. The kids are where we should start. Female, male, or non-binary, that type of thing. It's a very important topic.
BA: Yeah. Going off that note, what draws you to make work about the grotesque in relationship with the body?
ET: In school, I minored in anthropology and I took a forensic anthropology class. It was one of the best classes I've ever taken. It wanted to make me go into that type of career path. There are many facets of this anthropology: you observe generational trauma, you have to find people, and you have to essentially give therapy to people. This enables practices like proper funerals for family members to take place.
I also really like crime documentaries. Whether it's a past sentence or one that's going on right now, I love looking at the reactions of the people who are sentenced and whether they're innocent or not. That just really, really is up my alley because they could be innocent and or be completely guilty. And of course, that inspires me to do more with that in my work.
BA: So, taking this humanesque form, but then combining it with this abject, super texturized mouth feeding and then flipping it upside down. Do you think this has any relationship to a particularly feminine experience or women's perspectives?
ET: I think so. Because I originally wanted it to be very grotesque. I wanted it to portray certain aspects that are more sunken in gives that expression of that childhood innocence or any type of innocence and that can be taken away from you.
It's everybody's experience, but for me, as a female-reproductive, it hits close to me. For me to choose it upside down, it's a more interesting concept and it makes you focus on what's happening on the top part. That's where you going to look first.
BA: A lot of your work depicts, very abject, abject-ish, kind of grotesque forms. Do you feel that this ties into a non-gender conforming experience?
ET: It does. As somebody with a female reproductive system that's non-binary, I'm kind of forced to look at that and interpret it. Then what I want to be is something completely different, something that isn't always easy, or easily accessible. I put that in my artwork. That way I can see it how I want to and everybody can be represented by it too.
BA: The last question I have for you today is, can you speak about the difference between ‘Craving Innocence’ and ‘Hanging by a Thread’? How do they compare or how do you compare the imagery of prey and consumption?
ET: I compare them very similarly, I see ‘Craving Innocence’ as a kind of the process of processing your emotions, processing what happens, and then the aftermath.
The process of recognizing emotions and then ‘Hanging by a Thread’ is by kind of that mental status afterward where you kind of have to re-heal and you feel like you're hanging by a thread. I see them as very similar.
It’s kind of hard to tell with this one. There's a sheep baby right there. And in the other work, there's a rabbit. It shows we consume our prey. We consume animals that are just trying to live. My thing between them is that regardless of the situation, we are always going to consume something. Whether that's our prey of emotions, our prey in certain cases of harsher topics, they’re going to consume prey of kids. I feel like they're both hand-in-hand. You can interpret them as is.
BA: Well, thank you so much. This was Erin Tarrant! Please follow them on all the socials and check out their work any time. Thank you again for being a part of VESSEL. I am super excited to have your work here.
ET: Thank you for having me.
Watch the interview here:
“I want to get people thinking about my artwork. My work revolves around the body, our social problems and our connections with other animals that I found under appreciated with the commitment of relationships. I use all types of mediums but mostly go towards oil paint, oil pastels and clay. These mediums are important to me in regards to how tedious and precious they are and exact similarly to my topics.”