ERIN LAWLOR

"I originally visited Lawlor’s industrial East London studio ten years ago… [and] was struck at the time by how passionate and romantic her practice was, a love letter to art history, paint, and feeling. At a time when figurative or overtly ironic painting was booming, Lawlor was deeply committed to a sincere abstract practice. A decade later, painting seems to have come full circle, and the artist’s luxurious, cavernous paintings have taken on a prophetic quality. . . Her paintings are characterized by assured, sweeping brushstrokes that finish abruptly, rather than melting into the surrounding mass. Her inner minimalist, she tells me, is gone, and she has embraced a sometimes-lavish flamboyance. Her works are full of hidden spaces, which are suggestive of entire universes unfolding behind her surface marks, with wormholes opening between different works."

- Emily Steer in "Arcadia"

"Late summer, arcadia (2025) erupts in energetic bursts of fleshy pink and electric blue. Assertive marks swirl and crash together, revealing rich cadmiums and blacks below the surface. The more time one spends with the painting, the more its intense layers of shadow and light twirl before the eyes. Running across a dual canvas that spans over eight and a half feet in width, split with a subtle but firm line down the center, this is the largest work in Erin Lawlor’s eponymous solo exhibition at the Miles McEnery Gallery. It appears ready to suck viewers into its sumptuous, lively center, as it evokes the complex utopia of arcadia. . . The recurring ‘arcadia’ titles reflect on the double-sided role of this natural idyl, in which life and death are inherently bound to one another. This polarity reaches back through art history, Lawlor’s works touching on Nicolas Poussin’s famous impression of Arcadia: a luscious, vibrant garden surrounding a heavy tomb." 

- Emily Steer in "Arcadia"

"These paintings draw us back to the presence of the body, both our own and the artist’s, in relation to the work. While some pieces stretch across multiple panels, the scale of their individual parts is line with the size of a human being. This reflects Lawlor’s physicality, as she works from above and reaches all around the canvas, which is both limited by and expressive of the body. Since Lawlor has wrestled with sickness, the body, its capacities, and its ability to endure are an undeniable aspect of her work. Painting is both an urgent marker of existence in the here and now and a lasting creative mark that can outlive the human form. Her works are an embodiment of herself."

- Emily Steer in "Arcadia"