Erin Armstrong: Untethered

In her inaugural NYC solo exhibition, the artist presents a series of paintings and drawings that explore the quiet, disorienting experience of feeling unmoored; physically, emotionally, and psychologically. 

Across the exhibition, solitary figures drift through expansive, elemental landscapes: seated on eroding rocks, suspended mid-fall against dense trees, or floating alone at sea. Emerging from a sense of instability, Armstrong’s paintings capture the feeling of having drifted from shore. Rather than depicting moments of overt catastrophe, the works linger in the charged stillness before or after impact, waiting for something to shift. 

Erin Armstrong is a Toronto-based figurative painter whose work explores vulnerability, tension, and the psychological landscape of contemporary life. Working primarily with acrylic, she uses quick, instinctive gestures to construct dreamlike scenes populated by distorted, exposed figures caught in moments of quiet unease.

Set within dense natural environments that feel both protective and threatening, Armstrong’s figures exist in states of emotional suspension—teetering between presence and disappearance, control and surrender. Drawing from the tradition of portraiture, she uses the human figure not as a depiction of a specific sitter, but as a formal and emotional framework through which atmosphere and sensation can emerge.

Armstrong’s practice considers the imagination as a visual and psychological space, shaped by memory, lived experience, and the mind’s eye. Rather than recreating reality, her work translates internal states into atmosphere, examining how non-realities are formed, felt, and made visible. Through ambiguity and subtle dissonance, she invites the viewer into spaces defined by anxiety, intuition, and the fragile negotiation between body and environment.