Studio Blog

Erin’s passionate connection with the arts began at an early age. As a young girl growing up in Los Angeles, she would often visit art museums, then return home to spend days sequestered in her room with paint and paper, struggling to recreate the images she had seen.

When Erin attended UC Santa Cruz, she adopted the A-frame painting studio in the redwoods as her second home. There, after the other students had departed and the fog had rolled in, she would spend the night immersed in the creative process. Erin knew then that her life’s work, whatever it might be, would find its strength and inspiration in this process. Erin graduated with honors from UC Santa Cruz in 1975 with a degree in Arts, Crafts, and their History. She went on to get a masters degree in 1978 in Expressive Arts Therapies from Lesley College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Attention grabbing. With Erin Robbins’ paintings you just have to look. They cannot be ignored. Vibrant color used with sophisticated flair brings worldly stories to life. A woman in peaceful repose sports a Mardi Gras feather boa and hat sprouting multi-colored ribbons in “Two as One”. Turquoise skin on a woman in “Allies” heightens the […]

MEETING ERIN ROBBINS IS SUCH A PLEASURE—not only is she a warm and beautiful woman, but within a few minutes you also know that she is a beautiful soul. Her life is a testament to the survival of a human being’s inner drive to create, to draw from all that surrounds her, condensing and synthesizing it into textured visual art composed from the deepest, jewel-like colors of the palette.

In the case of Erin Maitri Robbins, participating in Open Studios has been an important milestone in her continuing recovery from a car crash two years ago that seriously impaired her “left brain” functions. Shed just quit a job as the executive director of a nonprofit at the time of the accident, and for someone whod been able to juggle hundreds of details in her head, learning certain information processing skills all over again was arduous and frustrating.

“Painter Erin Robbins, 49, is enthralled by color. Her Boulder, Colorado, home and art studio are awash in lush hues of blueberry, mustard, sea foam green, and royal purple. On her walls hang recent watercolors or oil works, expressionistic/figurative paintings that often feature a human figure emerging from abstract—but always colorful—geometric shapes.”

“Every hour of the day, Boulder painter Erin Robbins is awash in color. It’s more than just the watercolors or oils she applies to canvas—color literally surrounds her. The walls of her home and studio are painted with lush hues. ‘I’m utterly in love with color,’ Robbins unabashedly declares.”

In “Visions of the Unseen,” local artist Erin Robbins becomes a tour guide to the mysterious process we call creativity. Using her own paintings as examples, Robbins describes the fascinating and unpredictable journey from blank canvas to finished piece.