Living room (night)

Erin Fostel, 2021

The shadows of window blinds, an extravagant fern, and a windowpane— all in shades of gray— span a bare white wall. Baltimore-based artist Erin Fostel created this image while grieving a miscarriage; the living room becomes uncanny and imbued with nocturnal mystery. This study of space, of absence and presence, is strikingly rendered in charcoal and graphite on paper.

A graduate of MICA,

Fostel regularly addresses healing through grief and follows in her late father’s footsteps: he was an architect, and she portrays urban landscapes and empty domestic interiors in her architecturally detailed drawings. This work and the others in her Shadow Series, were made during the pandemic when Fostel was quarantined and inspired to follow the movement of light over her home throughout the day and evening, creating both a sense of peace and of loneliness.