ARTIST STATEMENT
Erika Ehrman tells stories through abstract representations of people, energy, and sensory perceptions experienced throughout her life. Her mixed-media work begins with personal examination of complex formative events such as her childhood in a mixed-race home, feeling unseen. Old family photographs taken in Japan, Europe, Palestine, and New York during the early 1950s to early 1980s are reworked to question what is visible on the surface verses what the underlying truth might be.
Ehrman selects images based on a combination of subject, composition, and emotional connection. She creates works-on-paper combining paint and photography to abstract the details to the point where they become faceless shapes against a background that exists outside of time. The artist deliberately obscures her story to allow space for the audience to create their own narrative. As humans, perception, assumptions, and fantasy combine to form our understanding of reality, which may not always be an accurate representation of the truth. We often see our encounters through our past experiences, or through what society imposes on us. Ehrman wants viewers to use their intuition as they look at the work, connecting to the narratives that arise within them and asking what story they might tell about the piece. What am I looking at? Who are these people? What do these shapes represent and how do they make me feel?
Form and color are crucial elements in Ehrman's work. Influenced by parents who were textile and fashion designers and her own background as a designer, her imagery is formally stylized and graphic. She experiments with different mediums and materials, at times incorporating texture and crafting techniques like weaving, sewing, and embroidery. Other times, her work verges on sculpture. Her process of creation is driven by relationships between elements. It involves finding a rhythm and connecting to materials and colors. It may start with a photograph where the composition inspires shapes, or with an impulse to play with how the colors or materials work with each other. This process of exploration is an expression of Ehrman's inner story. She is interested in how different colors and textures evoke certain feelings for her, yet different feelings in others. She invites deeper engagement with the compositions through texture, asking the viewer to take a close look and find something they may not see from far away.
In the end, these works are about visual and emotional connection and about how we relate to the world through our own individual stories.