Monya Rowe Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Erin Milez titled Round and Around We Go.

For her first solo exhibition at Monya Rowe Gallery, Milez presents a suite of paintings centered around family, domesticity, and daily routine. The works in the exhibition are autobiographical versions of the artist and her immediate family. Grounded in everyday existence, Round and Around We Go reflects Milez’s desire to understand and embrace the uncontrollable.

Loosely inspired by mandalas, Milez employs circularity to define the repetitiveness of a domestic day and allude to a sense of spirituality. Milez’s subjects are firmly aware of the present. The paintings attest to the artist’s ongoing interest in examining private moments with humor and honesty.

Although heavily influenced by mandalas, Milez is also inspired by the English painter Stanley Spencer (1891- 1959), Diego Rivera (186-1957), and the WPA artists (The Works Progress Administration was created by President Roosevelt in 1935, during one of the bleakest years of the Great Depression). Milez says:

Other than looking at mandalas made over a variety of continents and centuries, I was also looking at Vuillard and Bonnard, particularly in how every inch of their canvases feel filled to the brim with pattern and color. I wanted every inch of these pieces to receive equal attention and care, like how a mandala would because I needed to give a moment to and reason for everything happening in my house.

Erin Milez (b. 1994, Pittsburgh, PA) received an MFA from the New York Academy of Art, NY, and a BA from Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA. Her work has recently been exhibited at Lorin Gallery, LA; Arsenal Contemporary Art, NY; Cob Gallery, London; Kutlesa Gallery, Switzerland and Monya Rowe Gallery. Milez was awarded an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant in 2020. The artist lives and works in Bayonne, NJ, and is represented by Monya Rowe Gallery.