Eric Elliott is a Very Good Painter

2009 Neddy award winner Eric Elliott currently has an exhibition up at James Harris Gallery, continuing a body of work that makes elegant use of an extremely limited palette—achieved by mixing primary colors until they disappear into each other—to transform simple still lives into haunting, visceral worlds of their own.  My favorite paintings of Eric’s are the ones where a single potted plant dominates the composition as though it were the only object in the universe.

Eric Elliott, Ficus #2. Oil on canvas, 2009. 36 x 30 in.

Earlier this fall, Eric was the subject of an interview conducted by Joey Veltkamp on his blog Best Of.  The artist’s responses reveal a subtle mysticism that permeates the act of painting:

I want the figure and the ground to start to merge into one. I want the background, space and air to have as equal importance as the objects in the painting. I want to paint the air in front of an object, but I don’t want the object to disappear into the air, but at the same time I do. I think that contradiction is how the world really is (it appears that objects are separate, but really the world is more of a continuum). I believe that painting is the best medium for showing this contradiction, because no matter how much depth I create it is all just an illusion painted on the same flat surface.

(Read the entire interview here.)

Eric’s show New Paintings runs through Oct. 3 at James Harris Gallery in Seattle.  Don’t miss it.

~ by emilypothast on September 18, 2009.