“Outrage Coming Out of Her Well”

Erika Chu

18 x 24”: Gouache and watercolor on paper

ARTIST STATEMENT

Months ago, when I first painted this, I based it off the idea of having had enough - of being fed up. I'm not the most confrontational person, and I wanted to express what I felt in the moments where I was overcome with an anger that seemed to spill out of me. Since quarantine began, I have felt many moments of pent up frustration, sadness, and restlessness. With regular schedules disrupted and time turned on its axis, it became easy for me to neglect confronting these emotions, and instead to shove them deep down where they never went away, only continued to pile up.

Now, to me, this piece not only represents anger coming forth in one moment, but also the slow accumulation of those emotions. It reminds me to use the time that quarantine has given me to converse with everything under the hood - to introspect on not just my dreams, goals, and future plans, but also acknowledge the hurt, anger, and fears that all dwell inside to make me who I am. I believe that outrage, like truth, must sometimes come out of her well.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Erika Chu is an artist living and painting in Charlottesville, VA, working primarily with watercolor, gouache, and ink. She is interested in illustration, the human figure, use-lives of objects, and recently in incorporating origami into her work as "living" things.

To see more of her art, find her on Instagram (@rikayundraws).