Help Wanted:

Painter needed – and not to help paint walls! New York artist is looking for painting assistant to join her team. The ideal candidate should be comfortable with the human body and have experience painting live models. Candidates will have the ability to remain steady under pressure and be accepting of nude bodies, thongs and pasties. You will be painting directly on human bodies. No need to apply if you are awkward around other people’s nipples.

Chances are if I ran that ad, I may not get any responses, but if I did, the one reply would probably come from Erica Etcetera.

Erica joined our team as a body paint assistant two years ago. While she is a talented makeup artist and body painter, she also has a bit of a wild streak. Erica is unafraid. She tackles all types of projects without fear and is always up for a challenge.

One of her favorite projects include the Harper's Bazaar shoot we did in October 2018 that featured not just models, but all women, including photographers, editors and makeup artists. Another choice assignment was painting female models to look like statues placed in Central Park.

Erica just rolls with the punches and never acts surprised by anything we ask her to do. We traveled for a project in Los Angeles last year and I think she was one of the first ones packed and ready to go. She’s a world traveler, having grown up in Virginia and London.

It’s easy to tell that Erica been an artist her entire life. She has a great sense of color and an enormous amount of creativity. She never ceases to amaze even if she didn’t really set out to be a body painter.

Erica said she was always attracted to fine art, drawing and painting mostly. But ever since her 12th birthday, her attention turned to makeup. It wasn’t until after she earned her BFA in Painting & Drawing and Art History from James Madison University that people started asking her why she wasn’t a makeup artist. After hearing that for the millionth time, she decided to merge her world of paint and body paint.

I met Erica at her makeup graduation from MAKE UP FOR EVER Academy in SoHo, NYC. Her final was a head-to-toe body painting and I was so impressed with her work and the manner in which she went about it that I went right up to her after and the graduation and said, “Hey, I think you'd be a really great addition to my team!”

Erica is a wonderful addition to our team. I love her outlook on life. In a YouTube video we recently made, she said that one of her favorite things about humans is how contradictory we are.

“So, I really love body painting because it is both amazing because it's both so public and intimate at the same time,” she said.

That unique perspective is why we are thrilled to have Erica on our team!