Erica was born in NYC, where she attended LaGuardia High School
of Music and Art before earning a BFA at the School of Visual Arts.
After a short career of teaching art and special education, she left
to concentrate on her artwork.
Erica's drawings are inspired by women's use of decoration and beauty
as power. She is interested in the way women define themselves with
jewelry, hairstyles and accessories and loves all that glitters and grows.
Her drawings are mainly done with colored pencil but sometimes she
uses graphite, acrylic ink, pastels and marker as well.
Shows
(All shows after 2015 will be updated shortly)
Feb. 2015 - "Pow Wow Hawaii" Group Show with Thinkspace Art, Honolulu
Jan. 2015 - "Incantation" Group Show at Roq La Rue Gallery, Seattle
Jan. 2015 - "La Familia" 10 year anniversary group show at Thinkspace Art, Los Angeles
Dec. 2014 - "Fresh" group show at Thinkspace Art, Los Angeles
June 2014 - Solo Show at Thinkspace Art in the Project Room, Los Angeles
May 2014 - LAX/TXL Group show with Thinkspace Art as part of Project M/4 with Urban Nation, Berlin
Dec. 2013 - "Holiday Group Show" at Thinkspace Art, Los Angeles
Aug. 2013 - "All My Stars" 10th Anniversary Show of Strychnin Gallery, Berlin
May 2013 - LAX/PHL Thinkspace Invades Philadelphia at Gallery 309 Group Show, Philadelphia
April 2013 - "Draw" Group Show at Auguste Clown Gallery, Melbourne
April 2013 - "The Woods" Group Show at Strychnin Gallery, Berlin
Erica work has been featured on:
Juxtapoz
artistaday
UrbanNation.com
Blisss
Artfucksme
Supersonic
Arrested Motion
High Fructose
Logi Cult
Artsy
Jezebel
Press Release for "EMPRESS"
Thinkspace Gallery in L.A. from June 21 - July 12, 2014
Erica Rose Levine - Empress
Concurrently on view in the Thinkspace project room is Empress, the gallery’s first
exhibition of works by Brooklyn based artist and illustrator Erica Rose Levine. A New
York city native, Levine completed her BFA at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.
Working primarily with colored pencils, graphite and markers, Levine achieves an
impressive quality of hyperrealism in her work with a minimal use of media. Her
drawings luxuriate in painstaking detail, delivering impressive textures and convincing
tactility. Beautifully rendered and perfectly executed, the lifelike flesh of her sitters
seems to breathe. Levine’s portraits of imposingly regal women are influenced and
inspired by the glamour of fashion photography and pop cultural imagery. Her drawings
harness the fantasy, luxury and power of feminine beauty in a way that captures its
timelessness and its contemporaneity.
Levine adorns her portraits with the addition of gorgeous details, textures and luxe
finery, focusing her imagery on the performance of beauty and the ritual of self-
adornment. Exploring the establishment and mutability of identity through the personal
aesthetic, the artist reveals its power as a vehicle for fantasy and self-definition. Levine
begins her works with a minimal and unadorned subject, and builds the details and
identity of her sitter through the addition of embellishments. Gleaned from a variety of
reference materials and props, these additions and ornaments become transformative.
Whether it be an elaborate hairstyle, the inclusion of beautiful fabrics, dramatic make-up
or jewelry, Levine captures the unassailable armor of beauty in her immaculate
portraits.