Erin Cunningham

Erin Cunningham is a painter and illustrator living in Boise, Idaho. An artist’s artist, she loves to create anything by hand, as long as it doesn’t involve power tools. Knowing that she wanted to be an artist since she was little, art has always meant a lot of different things to her. In her earliest memories she recalls being haunted by a painting that hung in her New England home, just above and to the left of the television. It was of a sad and tired old man, a reproduction of “The Man with the Golden Helmet” staring down at her from another era. With its strange light and vicious shadow, the painting smelled of walnut, linseed, varnish and teak. She liked wondering what that man was thinking as his portrait was painted, and what his day was like. As she grew older, she became fascinated by art history and how paintings could take her to other periods in time; images of people that no one knows anymore, places that are forever gone, and things that are permanently changed. She went on to study Art History with Garth Claassen at the College of Idaho and later earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Drawing from Boise State University. Cunningham describes her process as vague and inconsistent, inspired by minutiae and remnant, and hopes to one day make a painting that, like that one from her childhood, would taunt a little girl from beyond the grave.

More work can be found here: www.erincunningham.net

CV (PDF)