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     Erika was born in Potsdam, Germany, where, as a child, she spent the war years.  At age twenty she emigrated to America.  After raising four kids, she turned to painting in earnest.  She is self-taught.  "I see myself as an intuitive painter.  It's not a planned process.  Somehow I start to paint an image and it's more like a thought that comes out.  It's more a memory.  I grew up in the company of women and kids, trying to survive in a war I couldn't understand  The sound of the sirens, running for your life to find shelter, and, at night, the fantastic flash and detonation of houses being hit.  And then the Berlin Wall coming down, the feeling of my youth.  How differently I could have grown up."

     "When I paint my figures I feel that they are part of a tissue - they are loosely painted.  I pull them out of myself slowly like pieces of skin that rip in the process."  Erika continues with her thoughts, saying that "since my trip to Oaxaca, I paint death with a happy face."

     Erika's works have been exhibited in New York and Europe and has received a grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts.  She is currently represented by Chameleon.