Mahinay (b. 1986, Santa Fe, New Mexico, US) creates paintings that oscillate between the architectural and abstract. Full of distinct character, each work utilises a unique ratio of materials and motion, colour and light. Her highly physical artistic process uses her own body as a tool for creation: from limbs to fingertips, the artist engages with her canvases in an intuitive way as she navigates self expression. Mahinay’s initial touch emanates across the canvas in a shimmering mass, and through her vulnerability with a process that can be spontaneous or ritualistic, she explores what it is to be human.
Mahinay constructs her paintings by dripping or pouring paint, using rollers and brushes, scrawling with an oil stick and tossing dry pigment onto wet surfaces. Her dynamic technique layers paint and then wipes it away - resulting in a luminescent skin - a bedrock of optical colour that glows beneath the surface. This is followed by a more gradual, contemplative dialogue as a composition evolves, a call and response approach in the pursuit of illusionistic space. Her aqueous painterly style produces a gestural aesthetic, where meditative strokes are juxtaposed with frenetic mark-making.
There is a push and pull in her works, sometimes a rhythmic tidal shift, sometimes something softened or held taut. Her titles can hint at this. Subduction, 2025, references the geological movement of edges of tectonic plates beneath one another. This occurs under gravity and differences in density. Planes of Mahinay’s work can appear to function in the same way, interacting with each other according to varying weights and textures of paint. The arced brushstrokes of Summoned and Swept, 2025, echo the undulations of ocean waves - pinched tightly at the canvas’s edge, they slacken in the centre as Mahinay toys with the work’s finely structured balance. Volition, 2025, is thick with layered brush strokes and streaked oil stick, a rush of colours and forms that speak to the artist’s intuitive markmaking. Each work’s palette is as varied as its composition. Mahinay forms intricate relationships between colours in each construction: every painting an active, breathing union.
Erica Mahinay lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, US and her BFA from Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City. Mahinay has had recent solo exhibitions at T293, Rome; Lyles and King, New York and F&deO, Madrid. Recent group exhibitions include Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; LA Dreams 3 Light Touch, CFHILL, Stockholm; What Dreams May Come, Make Room, Los Angeles and Once the Block is Carved, There Will Be Names, Galerie Greta Meert, Brussels.
