Interview with Mark Jon Erickson

Full name:  

Mark Jon Erickson

What is your current location:

I live and have painting studios in Oakland & Venice, California, but predominately paint in Oakland across the bay from San Francisco.

Tell us a little about the art styles that you use:

I think of my work as traditional abstract painting. I slip in humorous aspects, with cartoonesque shapes enabling me a freedom to experiment with mixed media, collage and drawing to complete my work. My interests in literature, comics and music can be incorporated to their fullest potential with the style of painting.

Scurrying images and resurrected ideas from my past and notations of the present lead me to each new canvas. I want viewers to see things, experience a moment in my painting. Whether it something lyrical or an impact of color, shape and illusion I seek to keep the eye moving. Collage elements are added to take the painting into another arena.
The need to feel something that may not be there at first glance, but to know it is there someplace, obscured momentarily, reminiscent of a long gander into the void that one creates out of nothing.

When it comes to my paper collage work and Polaroid shooting, I take more of a graphic approach, tending to single out the piece and offer it less in a pretty way, but more in what happens in the process. It follow wherever the mood strikes me. I'd rather shoot buildings in my Polaroid work than people and in collage, I treat it like a dance with paper and imagery.

Accidents happen and those interesting spontaneous occurrences strike me the best. I follow that lead in my work. The moment counts and to strike while the iron is sizzling is my technique. You have to have courage to be a painter. Ideas you have now, however they maybe unappreciated by others and the critics at the time you are undertaking the work, will be the ideas you look back on that made you what you are in the future. Once I thought of a  tale where the painter is the last survivor, when the ship goes down in oblivion.



Why did you choose these art styles:

I never chose, they choose me and I just know it is a natural journey. My grandmother and mother were painters and it just became a tradition in my family. The other direction was more structured from my father.
He taught me a lot about construction and building and tools and hard work. Between what the women in my family gave me and my father and grandfather's talents and advise, I took off from there.

My style of painting comes from the times I live in and the interests I have followed since I was a child. My influences are varied. Everything from things I see in the city streets to my own imagination when I am seeking inspiration to influence me. From Duchamp, Picasso and Matisse to DeKooning and all the great underground cartoonists have long ago shown me where to go.

What is your favorite one and why:

My current work with painting on canvas. That is my goal, to paint the best paintings I can, with some kind of impact and color and make your eyes dance around the canvas.

What other art styles would you like to experiment with:

I have tried every style you can imagine, from photo realism to landscape to color field painting and 3 dimensional painting. I feel what I am doing now is what I was meant to do. I often go back to techniques and styles I once did, ones I have passed over quickly and never fully delved into. It's all tools of the trade. Change is inevitable and something I seek. I just try and stay on course with what I am doing long enough to getsome good work out of it before I move on to other series of work. Change is inevitable.



How long have you been an artist:

Since I was a child, drawing along side my grandmother in her New York City studio, and going along with her and my mother to museums and galleries. When I heard my Uncle Benjamin knew Marcel Duchamp back in the 1940s in New York City, that just reassured me into my chosen profession

What influenced you to become an artist:

My mother and grandmother and the art that hung on the walls of our homes as I grew up in. Also the traveling around the world and the hundreds of museums and galleries I have visited. To me it was as natural to become an artist as it was to become anything. Art and music and film were my true interests ever since I was a child. Painting just seemed the course most natural after awhile.

How did your family and friends react of you being an artist:

My mother was very pleased, my father the opposite. He grew into it as I became more successful and I think he realized I made the correct choices. Other members in my family had varied opinions over the years, both positive and negative that really had absolutely no affect on me. I believe my parents were the only ones I had anything to prove. Their approval meant a lot. I did not want to be the one to go back to them and say I made a mistake.

Where do you get your inspiration from:  

Absolutely everything. It's a constant process. There are unlimited ideas floating around.

What are your tools of trade:

In my painting these days I mostly paint in acrylics, latex, inks and collage. All water-based mediums.



Do you live of your art or do you do your art as a hobby:

I have lived off my painting for nearly 20 years now. Nothing is easy, it takes work, concentration and some kind of professionalism. Knowledge of the market and a personality that can deal with many of the dilettantes you will meet on the way.

Do you promote/ sell/ showcase your artworks. If you do, how:

I exhibit in galleries and once a year I promote an Open Studio where I invite collectors to my studio and present new work. I use the web to contact collector and dealers and present work on various sites.

How did the internet influenced your art:

Not sure it has influenced my art much in the creation stand point, but definitely in sales and being able to show my work to more people than one can imagine.

Where can people see your artworks:

On these sites:
My personal site www.markerickson.com
Tilt Paintings tinyurl.com/ericksonpaintings
Tilt Polaroids loathemegacorp.com/galleries/e…

In these books:
Shades on White - Works on Paper www.blurb.com/books/914607
Lone Star Floating - a book of Poems and Polaroids www.blurb.com/books/871486
NO DESOLATION - New Orleans after Katrina By Mark Erickson & Katy Zartl www.blurb.com/books/738760

I am represented in these galleries:
Robert Green Fine Arts - Mill Valley, California
Angela King Gallery - New Orleans, Louisiana
Donna Seager Gallery - San Rafael, California
Toomey Tourell Gallery - San Francisco, California
Marion Meyer Contemporary Arts - Laguna Beach, Ca.

How can people contact you:

mark@markerickson.com