Trees of the Argonne (Elena & Mark Erickson Collaboration) Painting

I grew up in Venice & Hollywood, California. I paint & live in Oakland & Venice, California Published in New Arts - Painting exhibition at Robert Green Fine Arts - Mill Valley, California. On-going Mark & Elena Erickson New Paintings 2019 Mark Erickson is an American painter and the appeal in his paintings is due to its spontaneous unchecked expression of energy. The surface is very sensual. You get the feeling of the artist's physical involvement with the canvas in the creative process, especially in recent paintings which seem to invert the painting process. The surface of the canvas is covered with smooth layers of pigment of the darkest black, along with varied bright colors. Beneath the surface are the markings of a painting underneath. Most is hidden to the viewer's eyes. Our imagination must reconstruct the painting from what is only hinted at. Looking at these works is like discovering Pompeii beneath ancient lava as though the paint was pulled from the canvas to reveal its underside. Mark's canvases are a fine example of the archeological approach to contemporary painting. A quote by one of Mark Erickson's painting professors stated, "My paintings are intended to be additions to rather than reflections upon 'life.'" Hassel Smith may have meant to push his students to continue in the long tradition of putting paint on canvas. The paintings that Mark Erickson produces are interpretations of this same abstract language refined to high eloquence. A mid career, disciplined painter, Erickson offers an approach to abstraction in his paintings that have the essential elements of harmony, light and contrast. His work originated in theory from Abstract Expressionism, where at mid 20th Century, was a groundbreaking revolution in American art, it now becomes a rich tradition and point of departure. Influences of painters of the 1950s are evident in Mark's work, yet the direction is Erickson's own, clearly felt as the paintings breath the fresh air of contemporary thought. The works on canvas appear as if somehow you abstracted a modern-day color cartoon, word bubbles and all, twisted and turned it inside out and then splattered it forcefully against a white wall. The Dutch-American painter William DeKooning once noted that all paintings are in the long run either landscapes, portraits or still lifes.