Art as Witness. Writing as Survival.
Erin McGrath Rieke is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, advocate, and founder of Just E Productions whose work explores memory, survival, mental health, trauma, recovery, and human connection through layered visual art, journals, poetry, music collaboration, and community-centered storytelling.
Nothing was ever created separately.
The journals entered the paintings.
The music entered the writing.
Over time, the work became a way of surviving visibly.
In the earliest years of my life, creativity was never a hobby. It was instinct. Necessity. A way of surviving the constant movement of emotion that existed beneath the surface of things.
Whether the feelings were luminous or devastating, whether my mind was racing toward possibility or collapsing inward under its own weight, I always found a way to move through them by creating. I wrote. I painted. I filled journals. I drew on loose scraps of paper. I sang. I performed. I disappeared into music and stories because they often felt more navigable than the world unfolding around me.
Long before I had language for trauma, bipolar disorder, addiction, grief, or recovery, I understood that creativity could carry what I could not handle alone.
Over time, those practices became more intentional. What started as private survival slowly grew into discipline, inquiry, connection, and community. Gradually, I found not only a way through my own darkness, but also a way toward other people.
What remains at the center of everything I create now is the pursuit of connection: honest, vulnerable, and real. Creativity for me is always about bridging the distance between myself and others, using openness and authenticity as the foundation for every piece of work.
Not perfection.
Not performance.
Connection.