Erik’s Blog
Thoughts on art I create, and art that touches me.
Open Skies—Open Studio
These two paintings were created by the guests that came to the Opið Hús, a monthly event at the NES Artist Residency for the artists to share what they worked on. I had created two interactive components to illustrate my process—children’s museum...
Open Skies—Acuarelas con Cojones
This past summer, I traveled to northern Iceland to immerse myself into art-making at the NES Artist Residency for a month. Filled with anticipation I had resolved to let myself be guided by the environment, its landscapes, people, flora and fauna....
Art Disarms
Art DisarmsLook at this guard looking at art. Working at a museum, one knows that one is in service of the visitor. The care you deliver inspires and facilitates the visitors’ experience. For the visitor to be served best, everyone who enters the...
Ode to On Kawara and the Midterm Elections
By way of experimentation I applied way too much gesso to this canvas with the idea to let it dry facing down. Predictably, it yielded a surface that isn't smooth, the antithesis of the typical painter’s preferred starting point. Once dried, and me...
Helen, Brittany, and Woman #1
When I visited the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., last June, I took some snapshots of a guard in the exhibit “The Interior Life: Recent Acquisitions.” I told her about my project “Subject: Guard,” painting museum...
Painting Guards
Guards in museums and art galleries fascinate me. They are there guarding the art on display to ensure we don’t look with our fingers, or touch it with our breath. They are the one fixture in the room that moves, and moving in rotation with their...