you are invited into to an intimate world where encounters become expressions, process describes meaning and connectedness is everywhere.

welcome to the work of emily erb, painted during her travels to the island nation of madagascar, off the southeastern coast of africa. the images you see here were conjured as she explored and absorbed the local energy.

erb's work became a communication tool, both to the world around and from within. drawing from her fine arts training at temple university's tyler school of art, these deeply personal pieces are the outgrowth of her tapestry of experience. home in philadelphia, erb continues her own work and also is an assistant to odili donald odita. together they are preparing for the odita's exhibition at venice biennale, 2007.

in looking, there's a subtlety--a quietness. at once, her pieces become a vortex for sound and color, atmosphere and motion. but then, before our eyes, it emerges. color, space and sound, all vibrating, rhythmically building and assembling anew, as the artist--not necessarily nature--intended.

it's a world of spatial opposites, where line comes last, finding it's way ominously from the background to the fore, through layers of paint and memory.

erb's surfaces are places where color beguiles and textural layers form the corporeal from canvas. it is as if her subjects--unconscious of our presence--would suddenly turn, to find us all here, looking.

and so they look back, at once inviting and arresting us in their gaze.