Erin Szturm is a fine artist, researcher, and educator who tends to draw on narratives of solastalgia, amongst other reflections between themself and their surroundings. Born in Thunder Bay, and growing up in Rosslyn, it was towards the end of their undergraduate degree in Ottawa where the artist started to appreciate learning.* Rather than simply being, they leaned into becoming.

 

Since being introduced to interdisciplinarity, and having specialized in the trade of painting, Erin can be found frenetically applying their oils to any surface. The artist always feels scarce for time, overlapping their thoughts like it were collage, seeking the parallels between conversations of contemporary feminist, social, and environmental issues from those more knowledgable than her. Hoping to understand both the immemorial and ongoing, Erin works with print media, experiences, and their hands; they tangle themselves between perspectives, having great respect to their power, creating animated vignettes like code. You can see the melding of wild | rural | urban | domestic imagery. 

 

The artist seeks someplace quiet to introspect and wants viewers find her practice as a waypoint in their own voyage towards persistent revelations - one complete with perils, euphorias, and abnormal interventions. Though, holding the belief that the art she makes does not contain one single finality to leave viewers content, she considers her work a site for contemplation, questioning, and future interventions. The artist’s work is never the only truth; it is composed of all that’s touched them and, like themselves as an individual, is in continual development. 

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As an observer, collector, and researcher into the pleasures, horrors, 'nones,' and 'alls' of human experience, I hope my results reveal humorous, disgusting, spiritual, and used aspects lapping at the so-called mundane. Myths devoid of reason and folklore with(out) moralities reconcile as variations of myself converse and play. I try to find the question or answer that feels lost in me. Perhaps that is what connects us.

 

Remember me fondly, and my work? Monstrously. 

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*The city of Thunder Bay where Erin currently lives and works is located on the territory of Anishinaabe of Northwestern Ontario and the treaty land of the Fort William First Nation; Ottawa, where the artist went for school, is located on un-ceded territory of the Anishinabe Algonquin. Of Irish, Ukraine, Polish, and Italian descent, an ancestor to immigrant-settlers, Erin aims to be a better stranger, in-betweener, and friend through lifelong development. They encourage lifelong development.​