* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Erik Olson received his BA from Art Center College of Design in 1987, freelancing in Illustration until 2001. Erik received his MFA in Painting from Wayne State University in Michigan in 2010. He has exhibited his personal paintings in various group shows including the Williamson gallery in Pasadena CA and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit MI. Erik is currently a full time associate professor at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
Erik’s current work is a series of paintings that he considers portraits of late 19th century, early and mid 20th century, and 21st century homes, dwellings, and structures, as well as their surroundings in various stages of decay.
Erik explains the work by saying, “I am treating these portraits in an idealized manner, simplifying and clarifying elements of these structures, their individual characteristics, their environments and lighting to remove the viewer from a specific time to witness these structures on their own terms. The larger idea of these transitions is about being in between particular states of time or being, such as night and day, functional and dysfunctional, dreams or reality, are questions that I would like the work to provoke.”
