Ericka Wolf is an American painter working in oils, wax and resin. She studied oil and encaustic painting at the Gage Academy of Art and is continuing her studies at the NY Academy of Art, and the Grand Central Atelier. She has participated in group and solo shows in the Northwest and her work is held in private and public collections in the United States, Europe, and Australia. Her paintings have been featured on the covers of magazines and the poet, Andrew Gottlieb’s chapbook, Flow Variations. She was born and currently lives in Seattle with her husband and son. Inspired by color field painters like Jules Olitski, Mark Rothko, and Helen Frankenthaler as well as photographers Eric Cahan, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Debra Bloomfield, she captures expression that’s transient and intentionally uncomplicated. Something reductive but reflective, using color as luminous expression rather than illustration. Ericka invites the viewer to enter the painting, slow down, unclench and access the soft, blurry consciousness of waking up. Sink into the luminous light of the horizon before the sun sets, when your mind is quiet and open to what surfaces from the stillness. She feels the sky is the perfect metaphor for life’s expansiveness; whether open and light or dark and ominous. It is ultimately beautiful in its vibrancy, duality and impermanence. Or as Pema Chodron wrote “You are the sky. Everything else-it's just the weather.”