Life & Work with Evee Erb

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Evee Erb.

Evee, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
After earning my BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2016, I moved back to my hometown of Durham, North Carolina, where I worked at the North Carolina Museum of Art.

During that time, I also taught art classes and workshops while serving on curatorial jury panels for local institutions, had multiple local solo exhibitions, and participated in numerous national group shows.

My work has received multiple awards from national juried exhibitions and was even published in a hardcover art and design book in 2020. I have spent the last two years as an artist in residence at East Oaks Studio in Raleigh, NC.

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Definitely not. Building a career as an artist is not easy! It honestly took a lot of scrappy stubbornness for me to get where I am today.

One of the main challenges I faced was building a financially sustainable business model that would allow me to focus on my artistic career full-time – a struggle I know almost all artists face.

I worked as a bartender for several years while juggling my artwork on the side until finally, after years of hustle and preparation, I was able to make the leap and become a full-time artist.

Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a contemporary realist oil painter with a focus on figurative, narrative painting, and portraiture.

It’s hard for me to say which individual piece or project I’m most proud of, one because there are simply so many, and two because as I grow and change as an artist, so too does my own perception of my work. So, I suppose I’d have to say that I’m most proud of the fact that I’ve never given up in the face of hardship in being an artist.

I think something unique about my journey as a painter is that, while studying art I actually put painting to the side in order to study ceramics, sculpture, and textile design. Sculpting gave me a great foundation for figure drawing and anatomy while also a deeper understanding and connection to the materials we rely on as artists.

Textile design and weaving taught me so much about patience and tenacity in building a creative business, and over time, I incorporated oil painting back into my art practice through an interdisciplinary approach. My experience in different media allowed me to have a greater technical foundation as a painter and a clearer identity as an artist.

Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the COVID-19 crisis?
Oh man, of course. I think everyone has come out of the pandemic changed in some way. In late January 2020, I was in Chennai, India, for a friend’s wedding when I received a call from my family in a panic. “There’s a terrible illness sweeping across Asia, and it’s about to hit India!” they said, and that’s when I first heard of Covid.

I was very fortunate to leave India just in time to race Covid back to the United States and arrive home safely. India shut down just two days after I left, and I narrowly escaped getting stranded on the other side of the globe. Looking back now, I, of course, know that many people did indeed get caught in that sort of situation and had to seek shelter abroad away from their families. I feel incredibly fortunate to have made it back home just in time.

During quarantine, I had to figure out how to keep my art practice going. At that time, I was heavily influenced by the landscape, vivid colors, and incredible people I’d seen and met in India. I made some paintings about my time and experience in India, which helped me process the fear and uncertainty I felt at the start of the pandemic. I received several portrait commissions from people who had seen and enjoyed my work, and gradually, I developed a portrait commission-based practice that was healing in a lot of ways.

So many people were separated and disconnected from their loved ones at the time, and I got a lot of portrait commissions from folks who missed their parents or grandkids and wanted a painting of them to see every day. Being able to foster connections to one another through art is perhaps what I’m most passionate about in my work, and the portraits I painted during that time had such deep meaning for me as an artist.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: https://eveeerb.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eveeerb/?hl=en
• Other: @eveeerb

Image Credits
Erb “Autumn’s Passing” 16”x12” (2024), “Jymiah” 12”x9” (2024), “Shine Through The Dark” 12”x9” (2024), and “Silent Prayer” 12”x9” (2024)