C. Peter Erickson - Strolling

The first exhibit of our 2021 Summer Artist Series, "On The Bridge of Sighs" features works by C. Peter Erickson.

My perspective as an architect is that of moving through space. Essential to this is the passage of time. COVID-19 has brought us to this time of a “new normal” and even beyond. In response we persist as individual souls, each finding one’s way through the world, sometimes by bumping along conflicting paths. It has been suggested that the power of art is just “to be”. However, taken in the context of the passage of time, art as continuum can be about just being, in this ever changing world... incidental, fleeting and complete. This is to say, life passing by; nothing more and nothing less. As asserted by Edward Hopper: “The sacredness of everyday fact”.

For many years I was most interested in painting with oil on canvas, eventually trending toward incidental subjects caught in motion; painting “En Passant”. For this approach, I found airbrush techniques, once relegated to photo retouching, to be well suited for depicting the world moving before my eyes. I find it interesting when practical and commercial techniques such as airbrush, film photography and screen-printing, pass through a period of obsolescence, to later become available for making art. This, too, is an expression of the passage of time.