Featured image: Garden, Erin Dixon, 2020, chalk pastel on paper, 40 x 26 in. / 101.6 x 66.04 cm.
Erin Dixon’s works My Trip to Outer Space, Prophecy, and Origin Story explore the shifting terrain of memory, identity, and imagination through layered collage and drawing.
Erin Dixon creates layered collage works that combine drawing, found materials, and symbolic imagery to explore memory, identity, and personal mythology.
Using fragments of found notes, handwritten text, and richly detailed imagery, Dixon constructs complex visual narratives where personal experience blends with symbolic and dreamlike elements. Her compositions combine collage with chalk pastel, charcoal, graphite, and ink, creating dense surfaces where figures, animals, and landscapes emerge from overlapping layers of mark-making. These works function as visual archives of memory, revealing how recollection, childhood perception, and emotional experience evolve over time.
My Trip to Outer Space, Erin Dixon, 2019, collage, 41 x 88 in. / 104.14 x 223.52 cm.
My Trip to Outer Space unfolds as an expansive narrative collage that stretches across the page like a panoramic story. Inspired by a childhood memory of undergoing general anesthesia, the work reflects the confusion and awe of believing one had traveled into space. The composition weaves together fantastical imagery, floating figures, celestial shapes, animals, and dreamlike environments, creating a surreal visual journey through the mind of a child confronting the unknown. Dense textures and layered imagery evoke the fragmentation of memory, where moments of fear, curiosity, and wonder merge into a single narrative landscape. The work ultimately captures the profound realization that the world contains mysteries beyond immediate understanding.
Prophecy, Erin Dixon, 2019, collage, 44 x 30 in. / 111.76 x 76.2 cm.
In Prophecy, Dixon presents a figure curled beneath the shelter of a large tree, surrounded by dense foliage and a complex network of natural forms. The scene feels intimate yet mysterious, with delicate lines and layered textures suggesting movement through branches, leaves, and forest growth. Light seems to radiate from the figure’s head, forming intricate patterns that extend outward into the environment. This luminous detail introduces a symbolic dimension to the composition, suggesting visions, intuition, or inner revelation. Through its combination of careful drawing and layered collage, the work evokes a moment of quiet transformation within the natural world.
Origin Story, Erin Dixon, 2019, collage, 44 x 30 in. / 111.76 x 76.2 cm.
Origin Story explores memory and identity through a symbolic arrangement of figures, animals, and abstract forms clustered within a cloud-like composition above a dark bird in flight. The collage brings together fragments of drawings, handwritten notes, and colorful marks that resemble memories gathering and shifting over time. The bird at the base of the composition functions as a grounding symbol, perhaps representing transition, migration, or the passage between personal histories. Above it, the layered imagery forms a dense constellation of experiences and relationships. The piece suggests that identity is constructed from accumulated memories, stories that change and reorganize themselves as life unfolds.
Across My Trip to Outer Space, Prophecy, and Origin Story, Erin Dixon transforms collage into a medium for exploring the fluid nature of memory and personal mythology. Her layered surfaces bring together fragments of drawings, text, and symbolic imagery, allowing different moments and meanings to coexist within a single composition. Each work reflects a different dimension of memory, childhood wonder, intuitive vision, and the construction of identity, while emphasizing how recollection is constantly reshaped by time and perspective. Together, these works form a visual exploration of the stories we carry and the ways they evolve.
Learn more About Naturalist Gallery of Contemporary Art.
Home Planet, Erin Dixon, 2022, mixed media, 24 x 24 x 24 in. / 60.96 x 60.96 x 60.96 cm.
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