About
Erin Fostel (American, b.1981) is a visual artist who creates representational drawings with charcoal. Her work often depicts the everyday moments of life, from images of intimate home interiors to the shared public space. She holds a BFA in Drawing and Art History from the Maryland Institute College of Art and has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, including: the C. Grimaldis Gallery (Baltimore, MD); Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (Virginia Beach, VA); Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (Salt Lake City, UT); Neon Gallery (Wroclaw, Poland); Moving Poets Novilla (Berlin, Germany); and the Academy Art Museum (Easton, MD).
Fostel is a 2026 recipient of the Mary Sawyers Baker Prize. In 2018, she received the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City Travel Prize and visited Japan. Her drawings are in many private and institutional collections, such as the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Maryland Center for History and Culture. Her work has been included in several art publications, such as Walk the Line: The Art of Drawing and City of Artists.
Though a figure is not visible in her drawings, the artist creates a work that considers the viewer's presence. Drawing context from architect and theorist Juhani Pallassmaa, “Our bodies and movements are in constant interaction with the environment; the world and the self inform and redefine each other constantly. The percept of the body and the image of the world turn into one single continuous existential experience; there is no body separate from its domicile in space, and there is no space unrelated to the unconscious image of the perceiving self.” Fostel finds this constant reinscribing of environment and self to be comparable to the process of drawing. Where, the discursive nature of the site creates a visual essay of place, one which traces often unrecorded memories and sensations.
Her studio is based in her hometown of Baltimore, MD.