Erin Armstrong Featured in House & Home
In the November issue of House & Home, Toronto-based art advisor, Diana Hamm, shines the spotlight on Erin Armstrong's abstracted portraiture. Armstrong is quickly making a name for herself with her signature style of unique distorted figures and portraits in an expressive dream-like world. Juxtaposing the everyday with surrealistic imaginings.
Hamm writes; "Erin Armstrong is one of my favourite portrait artists at the moment. Her subject is definitely portraiture but not in a traditional sense; she imagines everything in her paintings, from the body to the background, rather than painting a particular person or place. Erin stitches together memories, experiences and images from her imagination in order to create lush and narrative scenes. She also uses vibrant pastel colours and fun patterns in order to balance the heavy emotions that the sitter often embodies. A sense of melancholy is palpable in many of her paintings — by allowing the mysterious figure to live among the joyous settings, a positive tension is created. Lemon (2020) exemplifies this: the woman’s face is undefined and rather joyless while she is placed in what looks like a holiday setting. I love the patterning on her blouse — she looks stylish but sad. Erin creates a dichotomy between the woman’s feelings and the setting, demonstrating the true power of portraiture."
- Diana Hamm, House and Home, November 2020
Armstrong's work is sold internationally and has been exhibited throughout Canada and the US as well as England, Australia, Scotland, Switzerland, and Sweden. In 2014, Armstrong was selected by Saatchi Art as their "One To Watch" and by Saatchi Art's chief curator, Rebecca Wilson, as one of "20 Emerging Artists in the World to Follow." blogTO counted her in their "Top 10 Most Talked About Painters In Toronto." In 2018, Armstrong completed an artist residency in Los Angeles at ESXLA.
Erin has created work for clients such as Nike, Anthropologie, Saatchi Limited, General Public Art, and The Drake hotel. Her work has been featured in Nylon Magazine, House and Home Magazine, Domino, ShopBop, Cultured Mag, Yahoo! News, Create! Mag, and others. She is currently working towards a solo show in Montreal and will soon take part in the Vermont Studio Centre Residency.