Erin Raedeke
Volume: Where do you live / where is your studio?
Erin Raedeke: I live in Montgomery Village, Maryland which is a suburb of Washington DC. My studio is in a spare
bedroom of our house.
Volume: Can you give a quick description of your work space?
Raedeke: Our house has an extra master bedroom on the first level that I use as my studio. The light is
southwest so it is really sharp and inconsistent during the day, so I work exclusively in incandescent
light.
Volume: What’s your day to day studio schedule like?
Raedeke: I try to get in the studio every day. I have three young kids and this is the first year that they are all in
school at the same time. It has really been life changing in terms of opening up my schedule. I wake
up and get the kids off to school and then go straight to the studio and work until I have to pick them up
in the afternoon. Some days are broken up with appointments and school related activities, but a
really good day is when I can work straight from 8:30- 2:30. Nights have never been a very productive
time for me, but I’m trying to change my ways. In the summer, I wake up early and get a couple hours
painting in before everyone wakes up.
Volume: Who’s work have you been looking at lately?
Raedeke: Robert Motherwell, Tomma Abts, Fairfield Porter, Vuillard
Volume: There’s usually a sense of depth in your work, but in most cases the space is really shallow.
What kind of role does spatial illusion play in your work?
Raedeke: I’m not interested in the traditional still life space of a table or room. I want the viewer to be in the
action. I think of the paintings as inhabiting a type of mental space – a piece of my unconscious that is
slowly emerging. Past and present merge and there is no beginning or end to the space. I’m curious
to exploit the space as well. The cloth paintings were an example of me challenging how shallow can I
make the space. I’m really interested in conveying a particular sensation and for some paintings a
shallow space is all I need.
Volume: I really like your use of pattern in the still life paintings. Pattern can be something equally
illusionistic and abstract. You paint from observation a lot, but the paintings seem to engage a
lot of abstract issues as well. How have you been balancing those things?
Raedeke: All of my work is autobiographical and pattern emerged as a key part of my work out of necessity.
Many of the cloth patterns that I use are old bed sheets that my parents received for their wedding – I
would sleep on many of the pillowcases growing up. I have an intense history with them and many
strong associations. The other cloths that I use are significant because their particular color
relationships spark a memory or sensation. In the last couple of years I started manipulating the actual
cloth with cuts, burns, tears, and stains. They’re very physical, aggressive and violent actions. I’m very
much thinking about mark, gesture, composition and other formal issues as well as personal
experiences when I am destructing the cloth. It’s as if I’m engaging with the abstract issues on the
physical cloth and then it then becomes about making an illusion on the canvas.
Sometimes I don’t see a clear division between working representationally or abstractly. For
me, the same interests and challenges exist in both approaches.
Volume: Do you think that there’s a much of a difference between representational painting and abstract painting at this point?
Raedeke: For me, abstraction is a direct way to engage with the formal aspects of painting. It’s about the mind
and hand of the artist as well as being an object in itself, its own entity. Representation can be about
those things too, but it also portrays recognizable objects and becomes about the artist’s relationship
to his or her surroundings. It is a window into the world that the viewer comes to with his or her own
personal associations. I feel that sometimes the objects in my still lifes can get in the way of the idea
or feeling that I’m trying to convey. Titles have become more significant for me in hopes of guiding the
viewer. The cloth paintings have also become a way to challenge the limits of representation and
abstraction. The painting reads as an abstraction at first glance and then reads as an object the longer
one sits with it. In some of the paintings, the paint tricks the eye as to read as literal cloth or threads –
it deceives the viewer until they get up close and see the cloth and threads dissolve into physical paint.
Volume: What do you do when you’re not working, and how does that impact the artwork that you make...? What influences your practice outside of the studio?
Raedeke: I’m very interested in how the mind works. I have been reading Sigmund Freud’s writings and am
currently engaged in a psychoanalysis. Painting and the analysis go hand in hand – they really feed
off of one another. Both are about observing relationships, thought patterns and projections, as well
as challenging preconceived ideas and assumptions. Everything that happens on the couch plays out
in the studio in some manner.
Volume: Any upcoming exhibitions, projects, or residencies in the near future?
Raedeke: I have two solo shows this month. One is at a new gallery in Baltimore called Exeter and the other is
at Artspace in Richmond, VA. I’m also really excited about a solo exhibition I have coming up in March
of 2019 at Flager College’s Crisp-Ellert Art Museum in St. Augustine, FL.
