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Artist Statement
Every painting needs to present its unique presence; an image of artistic perception as experienced by the painter.
My perspective as an architect is that of moving through space. Essential to this is the passage of time. Perception of one’s immediate universe is informed by an infinite continuum of visual images; some that pass in an instant, and some that tend to linger in the mind’s eye. Visual images provide circumstantial evidence as to the nature of incidental moments; fleeting moments when subject and viewer move into and then out of focus; perception of reality by way of images caught in passing: Painting En Passant.
The realization of passing existence transcends a sense of ordinary space and time, through the perception that here is here…and now is now, as asserted by Edward Hopper: “The sacredness of everyday fact”.
Selected recollections supply inspiration and reference material for recent paintings; incidental, fleeting and complete. This is to say, life passing by; nothing more and nothing less.
Process
Multiple photographic references are used in composite for painting with airbrush. Acrylic paints, are applied either freehand or by using constructed templates and stencils to achieve edge control and to model form. Color mixing begins directly on the surface by successive glaze applications.
Contemporary airbrush methods are consistent with the earliest examples of representational art ever created. The physics of airbrush painting remains unchanged from the dawn of time.
Mechanically, a mollusk shell would have been used to hold liquid pigment made from plant dyes or ochre. Into this vessel a hollow tube, such as a bird bone, was inserted. Liquid paint is drawn up through this tube by blowing air across the open top end with another hollow tube where fluid pigment becomes atomized into a mist, sprayed onto stone surfaces over and around applied objects, to shape the intended image.
A universal subject for prehistoric art was the human hand, painted in profile on the walls of cave dwellings. The oldest of these cave paintings yet found date to thirty eight thousand years before present.
Peter Erickson earned his architectural registration from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1980 after graduating from Syracuse University Graduate School of Architecture. In order to experience the great architecture of the western world he embarked upon a year of travel throughout Europe, North Africa, Greece, and Scandinavia for the purpose of photographing and sketching the people and places encountered along the way.
Returning to the US in 1976, he served as construction worker, draftsman and later full-time on site construction administrator for architectural firms in Boston and Cambridge before founding Design Technique Incorporated, a 14 person Owner’s Project Management firm delivering large and complex projects to the greater Boston community.
In 2014 the firm was acquired by new management and since that time Mr. Erickson has devoted his time to creative endeavors, specifically dedicating his time to focus upon painting, having successfully shown work in many venues over the course of prior decades.
In the Spring of 2018, Peter and his wife Candace sold Frost Farm; a small sustainable farmstead in Maine, and relocated to Williamsville, Vermont. He also continues to work out of a studio on Plum Island, Massachusetts.
Artist Statement
Every painting needs to present its unique presence; an image of artistic perception as experienced by the painter.
My perspective as an architect is that of moving through space. Essential to this is the passage of time. Perception of one’s immediate universe is informed by an infinite continuum of visual images; some that pass in an instant, and some that tend to linger in the mind’s eye. Visual images provide circumstantial evidence as to the nature of incidental moments; fleeting moments when subject and viewer move into and then out of focus; perception of reality by way of images caught in passing: Painting En Passant.
The realization of passing existence transcends a sense of ordinary space and time, through the perception that here is here…and now is now, as asserted by Edward Hopper: “The sacredness of everyday fact”.
Selected recollections supply inspiration and reference material for recent paintings; incidental, fleeting and complete. This is to say, life passing by; nothing more and nothing less.
Process
Multiple photographic references are used in composite for painting with airbrush. Acrylic paints, are applied either freehand or by using constructed templates and stencils to achieve edge control and to model form. Color mixing begins directly on the surface by successive glaze applications.
Contemporary airbrush methods are consistent with the earliest examples of representational art ever created. The physics of airbrush painting remains unchanged from the dawn of time.
Mechanically, a mollusk shell would have been used to hold liquid pigment made from plant dyes or ochre. Into this vessel a hollow tube, such as a bird bone, was inserted. Liquid paint is drawn up through this tube by blowing air across the open top end with another hollow tube where fluid pigment becomes atomized into a mist, sprayed onto stone surfaces over and around applied objects, to shape the intended image.
A universal subject for prehistoric art was the human hand, painted in profile on the walls of cave dwellings. The oldest of these cave paintings yet found date to thirty eight thousand years before present.
