Erika Kruger New Zealand artist
Erika and her work "The Eastern Hills, Remutaka Ranges, with Feral Pigs" at the "Ko au ko koe, ko koe ko au, I am you, You are me" Group Exhibition 2022.
Lower Hutt based artist, Erika Kruger, has been developing her painting skills for the last year while studying an Advanced Diploma in Creative Art at The Learning Connexion. Erika holds a Master of Design in architectural drawing and symbolism. This interest in drawing and symbolism continues into her experiments with painting.
Erika is inspired by the coastal environment of Petone Beach and the birds that live there. The beach shifts and changes, waxes and wanes, and is the last contact with solid ground before the spirit flies free. The main protagonist of these works is the tarāpuka black-billed gull - a near threatened endemic species. Their affinity to coastlines, and flying beyond the edge, makes them a powerful symbol of optimism, and the spiritual journey of the human soul.
Referencing surrealism, Erika is interested in tapping the creative and imaginative forces at their source in the unconscious. Eggs are a common motif of surrealists, and informed the first set of paintings. Human females are born with around 1 million eggs. By the time a woman reaches menopause, there are only around 1000 eggs left. Having reached the age of 50, Erika’s egg-laying time is slowly ending. This is a threshold and transition into a new and unknown period of life. Her current fascination with eggs and the symbolism of the female bird figure is probably related to that.
These paintings evolved intuitively on the painted surface. They focus on the bird figure and its relationship with space.The central characters are neither animal nor human, express our connectivity to the world around us, our diversity, and the unstoppable force of evolution. They are a push and pull of real and imaginary, an exploration of the mythology of ‘monsters’.
Erika is inspired by the coastal environment of Petone Beach and the birds that live there. The beach shifts and changes, waxes and wanes, and is the last contact with solid ground before the spirit flies free. The main protagonist of these works is the tarāpuka black-billed gull - a near threatened endemic species. Their affinity to coastlines, and flying beyond the edge, makes them a powerful symbol of optimism, and the spiritual journey of the human soul.
Referencing surrealism, Erika is interested in tapping the creative and imaginative forces at their source in the unconscious. Eggs are a common motif of surrealists, and informed the first set of paintings. Human females are born with around 1 million eggs. By the time a woman reaches menopause, there are only around 1000 eggs left. Having reached the age of 50, Erika’s egg-laying time is slowly ending. This is a threshold and transition into a new and unknown period of life. Her current fascination with eggs and the symbolism of the female bird figure is probably related to that.
These paintings evolved intuitively on the painted surface. They focus on the bird figure and its relationship with space.The central characters are neither animal nor human, express our connectivity to the world around us, our diversity, and the unstoppable force of evolution. They are a push and pull of real and imaginary, an exploration of the mythology of ‘monsters’.
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© Erika Kruger 2023
