An Exhibition by Eric Elliott
September 3-18
Sponsored by Dean & Mary Harris

Painting and Drawing Professor Eric Elliott grew up in Alaska and moved to Grand Junction from Seattle, Washington. He holds a Master of Fine Arts, Painting and Drawing from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a Bachelor of Arts, Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley.

Elliott works primarily in oil, charcoal, and ink. He uses the objects that surround him as a point of departure. These structures become frameworks upon which he varies the paint, form, association, space, light, atmosphere, unification, and dissolution.

Elliott focuses primarily on still life painting, and he pays close attention to the lost and found edges of the objects within his compositions. He works in repetition utilizing a variety of techniques and painting styles. He paints the same objects in multiple iterations, which is reminiscent of Claude Monet’s Haystacks or the Ukiyo-e prints of Katsushika Hokusai in his series, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. Elliott searches to describe objects in new and creative ways. One of the key features of his work is his attention to the subtleties of light and shadow. His endless search has guided him in the exploration of impressionism, expressionism, and abstraction.

In this exhibition Elliott goes beyond what is seen as he captures the essence of the objects he paints. The works are arranged as a morphological display acting as a continuum that begins with the real and becomes gradually abstracted until being drawn back into focus.