Erin Lee Benson

I am the descendent of a long line of traditional Oneida (Iroquois Confederacy) artists and craftsmen. As a child, I made Native American crafts by the dozens, which my family sold at powwows. These items included baskets, tomahawks, dreamcatchers, feather jewelry, beaded necklaces, and cornhusk work. I grew up with a traditional Native
artist sensibility, which was infused with a pop aesthetic while studying at Bard College in the mid-1990’s. As a light-skinned Native in a dark-skinned family, I has always been curious about the difference between “being” and “appearing”, the inside versus the outside. My work dances around the dual realities that can exist in a single moment: good
and evil, love and hate, safety and fear, beauty and horror. I both paint and sculpt, am not particularly loyal to any medium and am continually exploring new ways of pairing seemingly mismatched materials, techniques, and stories pulling from both my traditional
base and my studies as a contemporary artist.