C. Peter Erickson
Curtainwall, acrylic paint/panel
Receiving a set of oil paints for Christmas. I painted a forest. There was something black and crow-like in the trees, or falling from the sky and I did not know what it was. I may have been six years old.
Art had always been a high calling in our home and our parents were makers in many ways. I gravitated toward building things, drawing and painting. Architecture seemed to be the best of both worlds and I became an architect, gravitating more toward the construction than the pure designing side of the profession. Restoring a sustainable farmstead and commuting to Boston, having a foot in each of these two worlds. Now retired to a life of making stuff.
Microsoft, acrylic paint/panel
A formal training in architecture at Syracuse University Graduate School of Architecture provided a strong basis for design as well as dynamic problem solving. An extended walk-about through North Africa, Scandinavia and western Europe for the purpose of drawing and sketching people and places along the way brought my formal training into the real world.
A fellow artist, when we were showing in Newburyport MA, recommended CAA.
Local showing and memberships in Artist Associations, most recently in 2018, having been juried in to the Rock River Artists in Newfane, Vermont, where I keep my summer studio.
The tip of the spear.
Airbrush, commonly the supporting actor, once relegated to retouching film negatives, utilizes the same physical principals as the earliest form of representational art. The act of blowing atomized fluid pigment onto a surface, across templates and stencils, began more than 30,000 years ago in the form of prehistoric handprints and cave art. Examples of airbrush handprints have been discovered from Indonesia to France to Argentina. Development of these techniques has evolved only slightly with the passage of time as mollusk shell, hollow straw and human breath have been replaced by cup, pen and compressor.
It has been suggested that the power of art is just “to be.” However, taken in the context of the passage of time, the art of painting becomes about “just being”: Painting En Passant.
Every painting needs to present its unique presence; an image of artistic PERCEPTION as experienced by the painter. The REALIZATION of passing existence, when subject and viewer move into and then out of focus transcends a sense of ordinary space and time; here is here…and now is now. As asserted by Edward Hopper: “The sacredness of everyday fact”.
Selected RECOLLECTION supplies inspiration and reference material for recent paintings; incidental, fleeting and complete. This is to say, life passing by; nothing more and nothing less.
Streetscape, acrylic paint/panel
ts about time: “We’re captive on a carousel of time…” -Joni Mitchell.
I am still working on that one…
My greatest joy in art is when someone sees and “gets” what I am saying. My perspective as an architect is that of moving through space. Essential to this is the passage of time; Perception, Realization and Recollection.
Wherever it finds me.
Gerhard Richter in the present and many that have passed.
For many years I have collected Rockport School Artists… Aldro Hibbard, Anthony Theime, Harry Vincent and others. Also a collection of 19th century hand-painted Chinese Export Porcelain
Ongoing through March 31 @ Hotel on North in Pittsfield, MA/ May- June 2020 @ Firehouse Gallery in Newburyport, MA/ July 2020: Rock River Artists Open Studio Tour, Newfane VT
Check out more of C. P Erikson’s Work Here!
Website: www.CPeterErickson.com