Catherine Erb is a self-taught fine art photographer based in Memphis, Tennessee. Her fascination with photography began in the late 1980s, when she started using a camera as a way to visually journal the world around her. In 2003 she began working with the digital darkroom, producing her own pigment prints while experimenting with alternative processes that combine photography with encaustic wax and pigment.

Erb is known for luminous photo-based works, particularly her cloud studies and images of marbles. Both subjects reflect her interest in perception, light, and the quiet poetry found in everyday moments. Her cloud works invite viewers to slow down and “look up,” while her marble images transform simple objects into studies of reflection, color, and form.

Her process merges photography with painterly techniques. Beginning with an image printed on watercolor paper, Erb mounts the photograph to birch panel and builds the surface with soft pigments and multiple layers of tinted encaustic wax. The result is a luminous, atmospheric surface that blurs the boundary between photograph and painting.

As Erb has said, “There is a little break in time after something comes into my viewfinder, but before I have had a chance to react or form a judgment. There is clarity in that interval, and I try to capture that moment. When it works, the result is not just an image, but a feeling—and a reminder that the magic always happens in the present.”

Erb’s work has been exhibited widely across the United States and has been featured in Architectural Digest, Elle Décor, The New Southern, and Nashville Arts Magazine. She lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee.