From New Mexico to the Mediterranean: Motorcyclists, Mystics, and Milongueras

New Mixed Media Paintings

Artist Reception: Friday, June 26th from 5 - 7pm

What has long engaged my art is a quest for subjects who embody timeless spiritual qualities such as compassion, courage, and wisdom, who transcend ideologies and who, to a large extent, exist outside of their societies’ reward systems. In using discarded ephemera gathered from the world’s streets, I transform profane materials into works of sacred beauty. 

In this latest series, my quest to highlight the extraordinary within the ordinary individual life- through Portraiture historically relegated to oil barons and kings- has led me to portray artists, travelers, bikers, architects, dancers, seekers, and, female Catholic saints- autonomous thinkers, nonconformists who bypassed or even outright defied- authority, patriarchy, and institutions. One quality that particularly interests me is “immanence versus transcendence,” the idea of encountering God, the gods, and the Creator, the divine within oneself. This contrasts with the “without,” as manifested by institutional religious authority imposed by the Church whereby God and the sacred are only available through intermediaries. In my series, my subjects have touched the Divine through honoring their own individual passions and humble paths, and, in so doing, have touched and inspired the lives of others as well. 

On a political level, my life’s work seeks to illuminate our commonalities as humans, and these new pieces do not waver from this mission: their subjects are from London, San Francisco, Palestine, India, Turkey, to name just a few places; some are Catholic, some Muslim, some engaged in Occult traditions; some dance tango and some ride motorcycles; yet all share a sense of art, adventure, creative passion, and wanderlust. On a deeply personal level, I feel a kinship with all these subjects I’ve portrayed: like them, I have lived by my own terms- following my passions and a path that has taken me all over the World.. 

Their art—that is, their honoring of and connection to God, the gods, and the Creator—is one and the same with their lives, and is a transformative force celebrated in these works. 

—Erin Currier, Spring 2026