Erica Sturla [Biography]

Erica Sturla trained as a fashion illustrator and journalist and worked for many years as a graphic designer and illustrator. For the last dozen or so years she has worked in polymer clay and acrylics to create scenes with colourful, three dimensional characters set against painted canvas backgrounds.

"I just love working in this medium. Creating the figures brings instant humour, colour and movement to my subjects, while painting the backgrounds demands a more studied approach - I love the contrast between the two techniques. Inspirations are firmly rooted in the simple pleasures of everyday life and depicting the things that people get up to! For me, the important things are bold use colour, a sense of fun and trying to give the figures life.

My work now appears in galleries across the UK and my designs are published in children's books and on a number of ranges of greetings cards that are sold both in the UK and abroad. For the last two years my 'One Lump or Two' range has been a finalist in the Henries awards, the greetings card industry's equivalent of the Oscars."

2014 saw a chance meeting with Andrew the Director from Cloud Galleries and we launched my work across the Cloud UK Group in the summer of the same year to instant success!