Ericka Sobrack specializes in small-scale paintings depicting suburban scenes of America. Utilizing oil paint on wood panel, she renders theatrical and dramatic settings using stark lighting and selective color. She often reassembles mundane imagery to create a sense of familiarity yet ambiguity within her paintings, aiming to foster deep psychological connections with the viewer. Sobrack graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Emerging Media from the University of Central Florida in 2019 and was awarded a residency at the Maitland Arts and History Museum from 2019-2021. Her work has been exhibited in national and international exhibitions as well as multiple solo shows including The Lightner Museum in St. Augustine, Florida and Arts on Douglas Gallery in New Smyrna Beach, FL. Sobrack currently lives and works in Orlando, Florida.

About this collection:
My paintings are disorientations of everyday spaces, offering the viewer access into a realm of the unknown, ripe with psychological strangeness. Suburban environments are often subverted into a hyper-reality, revealing juxtapositions between the mundane and the eerie to create conflict and tension. I’m interested in how form, light and color within unassuming settings can be manipulated and orchestrated into uncomfortable, almost uncanny depictions of the banal. By deconstructing the mundane and colliding it with the abnormal, these familiar suburban settings transform into strange, otherworldly scenes that amplify human drama, usually suggesting an implied event, a vague story, or fragmentations of memory. Behind these charged scenes often lie personal yet common experiences that linger in a heightened state of uncertainty.
I often explore the idea of safety and threat within domestic spaces, where the viewer becomes a witness, an observer, or a participant of the narratives that unfold before them. These intimate scenes are an embodiment of the emotional discord many of us share, where vulnerability materializes, and we are forced to confront the uncomfortable truths of both physical and psychological isolation.