Erika James

Erika James is a mixed-media painter, working primarily with the encaustic medium.  Erika grew up in Portland Oregon and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Pacific Northwest College of Art.  

The landscape that shaped her experience, growing up in the Pacific Northwest, was one of dramatic vistas, fog, rain and a stunning array of geological forms.  Erika’s current work draws from her experiences taking in the natural world – evocative shapes, a striated canyon, a contoured mountain or a jagged rock-lined coast. 

Erika’s approach to painting takes remembered form and color as a starting point to inform color and spatial relationships of the paintings.   The painting then takes on a life of it’s own – a dance between form and feeling.