LINKS
ERIN REHIL
ARTIST STATEMENT
My creative practice is centered around nature-based spirituality, the divine feminine, and the importance of building a relationship with the unconscious mind. I believe that the artist-as-mystic fulfills a vital social role that remains very much relevant today. Drawing and painting are my core practices and I often work with acrylic and mixed media on wood panel, though I am expanding my visual language into sculpture as well.
Born and raised in Flint, Michigan, I spent the past decade living and teaching at international schools across Asia, and raising a multicultural family. International-mindedness has become a vital part of who I am. The geographical places I have inhabited hold tremendous importance for me; much of my recent work also explores the darker side of travel, the mental burden of dislocation and the difficulty of retaining a sense of self while absorbing new cultures. In my work, I desire to connect to new and unfamiliar lands, to experience the sensation of rootedness. My landscapes combine inner and outer worlds; I use transparency, levitation, and other methods to insert dream imagery and personal symbolism into otherwise real spaces. Formally, this includes a merging of classical rendering techniques with flat, graphic patterning. While these works are highly personal, they carve out space for my own nontraditional viewpoints, empowering the audience to do the same for themselves.
NARRATIVE BIOGRAPHY
Erin Rehil is a New York -based visual artist and international art educator born and raised in Flint, Michigan.
Rehil has exhibited paintings and drawings nationally, including in Michigan, Georgia, and New York, as well as internationally in Hong Kong.
As an educator, Rehil has a background in museum art education, and has taught over sixty self-designed courses to children and adults of all ages at the Flint Institute of Arts; subjects covered include drawing from observation, Japanese bookbinding techniques, methods of achieving abstraction, and sequential art for children and teens. Rehil has also offered private, in-home art lessons as well as figure drawing workshops for the general public.
These positive experiences led to a decade of working abroad. After completing a month-long study abroad in China, Rehil's international teaching career began with two years at Shanghai United International School, within an experimental bilingual program combining Eastern and Western approaches to art-making. Rehil later spent five years in Hong Kong at both American International School in Kowloon, serving also as a departmental head, and at Hong Kong Academy in Sai Kung. This period in Hong Kong included two summers of teaching Summer Seminar courses at SCAD Hong Kong and assisting on the committee that hosted the 2018 Asia Region Workshop for Art Educators (ARWAE), during which Rehil presented a workshop on drawing with silverpoint. These years abroad culminated in Sohar, Oman, where Rehil taught IB MYP and DP Visual Art at Al Batinah International School, setting up and managing a state-of-the-art ceramics department.
The IB's dedication to cultivating international-mindedness is a value reflected in Rehil's multinational family. Rehil's spouse is a dual citizen of Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, and together they have two young children.
Erin Rehil holds a BFA in Illustration from Savannah College of Art and Design, a BS in Art Education from the University of Michigan, and is currently an MFA Fine Arts candidate at School of Visual Arts in New York. Rehil lives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and maintains a studio in Chelsea.