ArtQuench Gallery Congratulates Eric Oliver!
Eric is the Winner of the Aug. “OPEN THEME“
Art Competition and has won one year
of representation with AQG.
To View Eric’s Profile page click the link below…
http://www.artquenchgallery.com/artistDetail.php?id=90719&name=ERIC++OLIVER
Winning Image by Eric Oliver, Title: Strange Flower
Juror; MONICA HICKS
I find digital photography to be a cross between reality and conceptual art. Intentional or not, exploring the use of texture in a photograph, altering the color saturation, and alluding to the history of a duration of use, in this case pots and pans, is really a beautiful idea to be considered by the viewer.
The content of this image is defined in its texture. The detail is composed of surface irregularities, that like the skin of an elderly woman are aesthetically interesting and tell the history of a life over time.
“Strange Flower” tells the history of a cooking utensil overtime and in many ways tells its story; asking for collaboration from the viewer to think of the possibilities for each scrape, scab, nick, and discoloration.
Very beautiful and interesting to look at!
Eric Oliver…
While I have always (as long as I can remember) gravitated toward creative endeavors and pastimes, it’s not until somewhat recently that I’ve fully embraced that which is a large part of who and what I am.
I was introduced to photography at a very young age by my father, an avid amateur photographer who took his camera everywhere and always had a darkroom and enlarger set up for processing & printing.
Even though I had never taken a photography class until college, by the time I got there I had been photographing, developing and printing my own film for years. After a little floundering about among the humanities, focusing on art seemed like a natural choice and I finished out my years there making art, directing and acting in productions, photographing concerts & other events, and being an all around creative character. Shortly after leaving college with a BFA in photography, I moved down to Los Angeles at the suggestion of my brother, where, with a little bit of luck and a little bit of hard work, I managed to become an assistant director for film and television
While I never stopped taking photographs or making art when I could—this is how I came to start creating original work for art departments (by doing it for the shows on which I was working at the time)—it was nearly10 years before I again seriously devoted myself and what spare time I had to art in earnest. The life of an assistant director with 14-15 hrs on set often being the norm, much of the artwork I did at that time involved nighttime photography—the only way I knew to multi-task while spending some quality time with the dog. It was at this time that I also started experimenting with using a flatbed scanner as a camera. The idea initially came out of trying to recreate some of the nighttime shadows, shapes and textures I’d been encountering on my walks without having to actually go for the walk
Painting is relatively new to me and is in many ways a rebellion to the virtual world. I have come to recognize the paintings as physical representations of my visual impressions while the scanographs are visual representations of physical impressions.
I participated in my 1st group show in 2007 and have been showing occasionally in and around Santa Monica since then. Last Summer, I completed work as Production Designer on the feature film, “Home” in NYC. I’m currently working on a series of wood grain paintings in which I let the natural wood grain of the panels guide me in discovering an image.
A series of pastel window screen print-paintings started as a rebellion against the increasingly fine resolution capabilities of Inkjet printers in the late 90s. In using window screens as one would a silkscreen to create a unique print, the pastel “pixels” become grossly obvious giving these hand-made prints a pixellation which would have been frowned upon by most digital printing enthusiasts.
For a number of years in the early 2000s, I used pastel on canvas as a way of exploring many of the same tools and concepts I had previously been exploring in the digital realm.
TO ENTER This month’s “Western Outlook” Art Competition
click the image below..
Above Image “Sunset” by Stacia Gates
Be Inspired! ...and Get ArtQuenched! 