{"id":36680,"date":"2018-03-26T20:45:53","date_gmt":"2018-03-27T02:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=36680"},"modified":"2025-11-04T17:18:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T00:18:21","slug":"john-erickson-ready-to-do-some-real-damage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/john-erickson-ready-to-do-some-real-damage\/","title":{"rendered":"John Erickson: Ready to Do Some Real Damage"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2013,\u00a0John Erickson was selected by 200 of his peers as one of \u201cUtah\u2019s 15 most influential artists.\u201d The following profile appeared in\u00a0<\/em>Utah\u2019s 15: The State\u2019s Most Influential Artists, published by Artists of Utah in 2014.<\/em>Artists of Utah recently announced the beginning of Round 2 of Utah\u2019s 15, their project to celebrate Utah\u2019s most influential artists (click here<\/a>\u00a0 to learn about Round 2 of Utah\u2019s 15.).<\/em><\/p>\n

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Photo by Zoe and Robert Rodriguez.<\/p><\/div>\n

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I<\/span>n early 2012, the Gittins Gallery in the University of Utah\u2019s Fine Arts building featured an exhibition of drawings and paintings of a single male model with gaunt face and bony hands. What made this exhibit particularly unusual was that the model was art professor John Erickson. Aerin Collett, the student who curated the exhibition of works by current and former students says, \u201cHe is aware of his own structural features that allow the eye to see the fundamental structure of the human form; he is a tool for the beginning artist to learn anatomy through him both verbally and visually.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Though the model was the same, the resulting drawings and paintings were individually expressive. That\u2019s exactly as Erickson would want it and testimony to his value and influence on students for the past 30 years.<\/h4>\n

An assistant professor at the University of Utah, Erickson treats his classes like a research lab; he might be looking for a cure for the mundane while inoculating his students against their native cultures. He takes his experiences in this laboratory back to his studio and adds to his own visual vocabulary. In genuine humility he may tell you that he never much envisioned commercial success as an artist. Yet, that is exactly what happened.<\/h4>\n

As teacher\/artist, the 60-year-old Erickson is the role model for the stay-true-to-yourself artist with no desire to be a commodity for the masses. Yet, at this stage in his life and career, he proves this model can work \u2013 maybe not for everyone \u2013 but for one willing to work hard in the lab, evolve, and wait for that day of convergence when all of a sudden your vocabulary is attractive to collectors and dealers.<\/h4>\n

And perhaps his abstracted mixed media paintings have served to educate art collectors as well as students. Whether displayed at Phillips Gallery, the Utah Museum of Fine Art, Springville Art Museum, Coda Gallery, or other venues, viewers may wonder at the juxtaposition of an apple hanging from a string in a portrait or a cat strolling through a figurative painting. And they may wonder about his rough combination of latex paint and torn pieces of magazine pages, along with the realistic rendering of an eye or nose in oils. Encase all that roughness in a shiny coat of resin and the painting becomes more accessible to collectors eager to be a bit brave, maybe to demonstrate their sophisticated art taste to friends.<\/h4>\n

No doubt there\u2019s an audience ready for Erickson\u2019s work. Two years ago, Phillips Gallery displayed Erickson\u2019s series of \u201cbig head\u201d portraits \u2013 up to 3 x 4 feet in size. Ultimately, the gallery sold about eight of the collection. Coda Gallery in Palm Springs, Calif., exhibited more paintings from the same series and sold six in two days.<\/h4>\n

Since then, Erickson has embarked on a different kind of portraiture: dogs. In typical Erickson fashion, he stays true to his vision and his own vocabulary while trying to serve the needs of the clients who commission his work. He makes house calls to meet his subject and gets a feel for the dog\u2019s personality and relationship to the owner. While there, he looks around at the owner\u2019s art collection. \u201cHow much abstraction can they stand?\u201d he wonders.<\/h4>\n

When the director of the Coda Gallery in Park City saw a couple of his dog paintings in 2012 in Helper, she asked if she could take them back to the gallery with her. Within three weeks she had sold both and requested more.<\/h4>\n

Despite his success with three galleries, currently, and with about seven commissions in the past year, Erickson says, \u201cI almost feel like I\u2019ve just done the foundation program, mastered a few fundamentals. I feel very much like I\u2019m just getting warmed up. I hear other people my age talking about backing off, retiring. I don\u2019t feel that way. I feel like there\u2019s now a window of opportunity to do some real damage, create some surprises.\u201d<\/h4>\n

What direction he takes next may well depend on what happens back in the lab. He teaches life drawing, figure drawing and painting, figure structure, heads and hands, and landscape painting. He teaches some classes in the fall, others in spring or summer. The amount of curriculum he has created in 30 years of teaching amazes even him. \u201cAt the same time, I never felt like I\u2019ve arrived or become part of an institution,\u201d he says. \u201cI always feel disenfranchised, which I think is essential to the way I operate.\u201d<\/h4>\n

This isn\u2019t just humility speaking, but a never-ending desire to find just the right method to \u201cdestroy\u201d students\u2019 lives. Not literally, of course, but this is a good example of \u201cErickson, the philosopher,\u201d who sometimes makes students wonder if it\u2019s a drawing class or a philosophy class they signed up for.<\/h4>\n

Former student Amelia Sardoni says of her first class (figure structure) with Erickson, \u201cI honestly didn\u2019t understand a word he said; he seemed to communicate in riddles. Looking back I realized I expected someone to tell me what to do and explain to me how to get an A. John never did that. He explained \u2018gestalt\u2019 in more complex ways than its actual definition by exploring it with every student individually.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Alex Morris, another former student also notes Erickson\u2019s individualized teaching methods: \u201cHe can adapt when faced with a unique learning style and has a keen eye for who in his class might need a little more attention versus one who needs space to flourish. Like two colors of the same value placed side by side, John places himself on the same level as his student and both advance the painting of their careers, paraphrasing what John would say, to the point where the tension is exquisite. I always knew that when I took a class from John that by the end of the semester I would have evolved in my understanding of the figure, advanced my technique for mark making and come out of it more independent and confident of my own voice as an artist.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Erickson likens his teaching strategy to a rebirth. \u201cI think I need to rebirth them so that their old social conventions are destroyed,\u201d says Erickson. \u201cYou become an outlaw to your own socialization. Which can become lonely. As a teacher, you take that loneliness and domesticate it a bit.\u201d That\u2019s how collage entered his lab.<\/h4>\n

After teaching figure drawing much like other professors, with an emphasis on planes, angles, and point-vector processes, Erickson found students either resisted or didn\u2019t comprehend. They continued to draw with curved lines and shading, as they had in high school, without fully comprehending the underlying structure of the form. Erickson needed something to jar them out of their old processes and ways of seeing. \u201cWhat can I do to invade someone on a deeper level?\u201d he wondered. \u201cWhat can I do to revolutionize their seeing process that kind of leaves them questioning their current world view?\u201d<\/h4>\n

With a magazine, scissors, and glue, students were reborn. And Erickson\u2019s own work in the studio was transformed as well. \u201cCollage came in as a passive-aggressive way to jar them out of their patterns. Then I realized I should do this myself. That\u2019s where teaching has been rich. You see what students do and say, \u2018Yeah, that worked. I would never have done that on my own. I can\u2019t wait to take it back to my studio.\u2019\u201d<\/h4>\n

But it\u2019s not just the use of mixed media that characterizes Erickson\u2019s work and challenges his students. It\u2019s a way of seeing, imagining a different reality, and incorporating that into a work of art. From his own art education \u2013 University of Utah and Yale University \u2013 he has been influenced by artists of the Renaissance, Impressionist, Modernist, and Post-Modernist periods.<\/h4>\n

He can pick and choose, combine or emphasize any of those influences in his work. And as he teaches, he\u2019s never without an armload of books relevant to the needs of individual students. \u201cI\u2019ll bet you\u2019ll identify with this artist,\u201d he might say, handing a book of Fairfield Porter paintings to a student.<\/h4>\n

He encourages students to think about whether they are working from a linear-sequential mode or a random-abstract mode. \u201cDo you want to document what you see?\u201d he asks a landscape painting student, \u201cOr do you want to experience it from the subconscious?\u201d And if this kind of thinking is new and strange to some of his students, Erickson can usually demonstrate what he means by showing his own work. Not that he wants or expects students to copy his process or vocabulary, but words cannot quite express \u201cslippage from one reality to another\u201d the way an Erickson painting can. And just talking about the formal elements of design doesn\u2019t quite have the impact of seeing it in an Erickson painting. Nor does \u201cthe materiality of the paint\u201d totally make sense until you see it in his work.<\/h4>\n

An Erickson portrait \u2013 dog or human \u2013 is not your typical portrait. It\u2019s the artist\u2019s own way of seeing right now, after all those years in the lab, and all those influences from historical and contemporary art. \u201cAt this point my process is so convoluted, it is what it is,\u201d says Erickson. And that seems to be just fine with his galleries, his customers, and his students.<\/h4>\n
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In 2013,\u00a0John Erickson was selected by 200 of his peers as one of \u201cUtah\u2019s 15 most influential artists.\u201d The following profile appeared in\u00a0Utah\u2019s 15: The State\u2019s Most Influential Artists, published by Artists of Utah in 2014.Artists of Utah recently announced the beginning of Round 2 of Utah\u2019s 15, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":940,"featured_media":36681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,14],"tags":[546,1400],"class_list":["post-36680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist_profiles","category-visual_arts","tag-john-erickson","tag-utahs-15"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/2014-01-14-John-Erickson-for-Utahs-15-8446-1938-final-edit-AdobeRGB.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-29 20:34:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/940"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36680"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97699,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36680\/revisions\/97699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}