In deep mental Painting

1948 Reykjavik Iceland.
Erla studied art, at The Reykjavik School of Visual Art and later at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
Her first solo exhibition was in 1979. In 1983 she exhibited pastels in Asmundarsalur in Reykjavik and pastels, as well as oils, the following year in the Nordic House in Reykjavik. Since then she has had many solo exhibitions in Iceland, and the year 2000, in Oslo and Seattle. She has also taken part in joint exhibitions both in Iceland and abroad.

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Staying in Paris, and getting to know artists from other countries, has given Erla much strength, and freedom as an artist.
On an afternoon walk in one of the narrow streets in the Marais, Erla came across an old scale and it's weights. It was like the weights called to her. From the first moment, Erla experienced the weights as persons who stood there ready to weigh and express how much worth everything is. Memories from childhood, the beauty of nature, the light, love and playfulness.

How much worth is.?.

Erla bought the scale and brought it with her to Iceland. Now it is standing in her studio and the weights keep her company and seen or unseen the forms of the weights and the scale wind into her work, her paintings of close ups of nature.
Erla's motives have been variegated. In the beginning of her carrier she painted mostly landscape and figurative work.
She sketched outdoors, and sensed later that she worked the motive into a larger painting in her studio.

Now she looks closer into the nature, deals with the various colours and allows the memories to come to her. The technique takes over, the weights become personalized and objects from her closest vicinity get a role, in the closeness of the land and the surroundings that she knows so well.