A Closer Look at Erika b Hess

END OF SUMMER

Erika b Hess | Daina Higgins | Dion Johnson | Jignesh Panchal | Nikos Fyodor Rutkowski

Contemporary Art Matters is pleased to welcome Erika b Hess to the gallery. The End of Summer exhibition features works from her latest series entitled A Woman Having a Spiritual Awakening in Her Own Backyard that depicts women in outdoor spaces, dream spaces, and sometimes both. This is a beautiful journey of intense colors that take us to a place of our own spiritual awakening.

Erika b Hess (born 1982, lives and works in Gahanna, Ohio) is known for her distinctive use and interest in color. She creates abstract forms and movements with oil that represents figurative and symbolic viewpoints. Persephone goddess of fertility and the Greek mythology that surrounds her inspires this most recent body of work. “I make oil paintings that deal with basic human narratives, such as birth and death, through a female identified lens. I’m really interested in color, mostly color that comes out of a consumer culture, so juicy colors that attract the eye; hot pinks, bright teals, colors that are considered feminine.”

Hess’ bright and exuberant paintings interpret Greek mythologies with a modern, feminist perspective. While she finds inspiration in the natural world, the resulting paintings depict a more mysterious, lush, otherworldly place with flower-figures, imagined and real flora and fauna.