About Erica: I started writing when my children were young - first poems for
kids, then light verse and prose pieces for adults. Much later I tried doing
book-length stuff. My third biography for children will be published later this
year. But my more than a dozen picture book texts are still looking for publishers. I write mostly about animals and the environment.
Ever since it became an accepted fact the chimps can
paint pictures of artistic merit, I have been determined to go the zoo officials one better. After
all, it is well-known that animals possess a natural feeling for life. Consequently, I reasoned, let's let the animals express themselves directly.
With this end in view, I bought a white mouse. Carefully I dipped each of its paws into a pan of poster
paint as follows: right front, red; right rear, blue; left front, green; left rear,
yellow. Then, having placed a white sheet of paper in the bottom of its cage, I let it scamper several times over the paper. The result was a pleasing design that showed the artist's fine feeling
for form and balance. Executed of necessity in dramatic flat tonal contrasts, it is a work that is powerful in spirit and in composition. There is in it
a direct appeal to our sense of freedom, yet also a sense of order in the sequence of the splashes of color.
Next, I took a paint brush of 2-inch width (previously used to paint the porch railing), dipped it into red paint, and tied it to our Irish setter's
tail. When the master of the house stepped inside the front door that evening,
I held up a blank canvas just behind the setter. The resulting painting is a
forceful statement of form and pure color, executed with a deliberate, primitive crudeness. It appears to have a rhythmic life of its own, organized by the
parallel strokes of the brush. The great emotional stress of the artist is
shown by the dramatic contrast of red against white and the by the violent brush
marks.
Lastly, I dug up a 5-inch earthworm in the back yard and smeared its entire length along one side with green paint and on the other side with brown
paint. After placing it gently on a sheet of white bond paper, I poked it and
flipped it over several times. Its wigglings made a lovely pattern, a visual rendering of movement that expresses the drama of conflict. The colors are
symbolic of the struggle between life and death. There is something direct and
down-to-earth about this work, something that appeals to the primeval in each of
us.
With these three paintings, I hope to start a new movement in primitive abstract expressionism. I will be anxiously awaiting offers from serious
collectors of faunal art.
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