Sunny Face

Collection of Collin Gratz

Statement

The Sun Portraits are a hybrid of Erika Knerr’s studies in solar technology, Shamanism and Buddhist meditation. The essential characteristics of shaman are mastery of energy as a medium of transformation. She has studied indigenous healing rituals, and worked with healers and mythic archetypes from South American and Hawaiian lineages. When she moved from NYC in 2006, she became directly involved with the renewable energy community in Western Massachusetts and
co-founded two Solar Energy companies in Hatfield, Massachusetts. The relationship between Solar Energy and Invisible Energy Medicine overlaped and she became interested in translating “these Invisible energies” on canvas and paper. She began working with the “Sun” as subject matter in her painting practice.

The paintings are created through a process using yellow powdered pigments, binder, thinned acrylics, inks, wine, dyes, coffee, teas and other natural liquid dyes on canvas. Paintbrushes have been replaced with large pelican and turkey feathers. Ritual in collaboration with art making, is a necessary act of recovering from the 200+ year war on nature kept alive by the paradigm of capitalism and the industrial revolution. Her work represents the opportunity for a radical shift in consciousness. One that recognizes the SPLIT nature of the perception of our time, an awareness of the great divide between “Mind and Body,” when in fact they are inseparable.

Each Sun Portrait speaks of the changing vibration of our Sun as a living being, existing at any given moment. Chance is an important part of the process. Accident, authorship and sacred space all arise to engage in a song of visual imagery in play with the maker and the viewer. She is posturing an image of hopefulness and sanity in contact with an essential relationship with our environment.