From Erika’s website – Erika is a self-taught full-time artist from Africa working in Auckland, New Zealand. She holds an Advanced Diploma in Art and Creativity from TLC as well as an international Batchelors in Music. Her work explore the primitive and whimsical with an often quirky narrative. It touches on the representational with a biographical element seated in childhood experiences and children’s fables and fantasies. Logic is sometimes displaced by a play on realism and language, with a surreal edge.
Her work is held in private collections in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa and Sweden and she is currently represented by Red Spot Gallery in Rotorua as well as The Garden Art Studio in Cambridge.
Artist Statement:
“The works in this collection show my fascination with chimera – fanciful illusions and fabrications – and situations that seem impossible, yet there they are. There is no ulterior motive for making these works other than to experience for myself, the pleasure of creating something that I’ve never seen before, something that provides fun, joy, hope, beauty, and a little escape. The act of and reason for painting is a selfish one.”
E Husselmann.
