ericalander
Artist Bio:
Erica Lander is a Writer, Illustrator, Animator, and Game Developer, who earned her B.A in Studio Art from California State University Long Beach in 2021. She has storyboarded independent short films such as Storage (2021) through UCLA and TV productions such as Grey Matter for CSULB from 2018-2019. Her work focuses on the overwhelming experience it is to be human, encapsulated in the belief that there are three things that all humans experience: love, grief, and understanding in that order. Her work demands the viewer to recognize the inevitable faults of existence with no destination, to question one’s purpose when surrounded by the weight of everyone else’s. With an eternal love for the macabre and everything that the horror genre has to offer, her pieces demonstrate the beauty to be found in the uncomfortable, alongside the unspoken off-putting tendencies of the mundane.
Artist Statement:
My name is Erica Lander.
My artwork, spanning across multiple mediums, begs the question of what it means to acknowledge your grief, versus what it means to live it. So much of my artistic career has stemmed from the idea that we as people are as much our good moments as our bad, and one experience cannot hold the impact it is meant to without the existence of the other. I use a variety of media to get this point across, primarily digital illustration, animation, and game design through visual novels and unity productions. I find kinship and connection through the genre of horror, both of the psychological and visual kind. The close relationship between the ways we process grief and the physical manifestations of the desire to lock such intense emotions away is what fuels the work I produce. Through the work I put out I seek to unite the viewer and myself in a shared catharsis: of the lives we’ve lived, the pain we’ve felt, and how both those things hurt as much as they heal, showing how through sharing such stories with each other, taking the time to truly listen to one another, only then can we discover our own sense of self and find a true sense of peace.
