Art is a fickle term; writing is an art just as much as painting is, yet the term itself evokes different images from person to person. One particularly amusing image is the notion of an art class with young children scattered around a room using water colors, finger paints, and – in rare cases of trust, these days – clay! Yet each person's art is most decidedly their own, and there is no greater example of this than Eric Person, a brilliant artist from Bellmore, New York.
The Art of Eric Person
Mr. Person's artistic style is one that embraces a number of key features. The first is his strong preference for oil and canvas, claiming on his website that it allows for the “mysterious and unintentional” to emerge from the muse's depths. The nature of oil paint seems to flow into another interest of his, the intertwined aspects of life, nature, and progress. Many of his paintings (such as the one pictured, Fire at Mt. Fiona) involve images which invoke a fusion of human bodies with tree-like branches. Paintings such as this one can cross into the line of frightening, a sure factor for those who might follow his work; yet such images never cross into the obscene, nor the political.
He has also lent his paintbrush to a number of other projects, from the covers of a breath spray designed for professional singers and laryngitis sufferers alike, to the cover of poetry books. He has also been heavily influenced by the signs of the Zodiac; he places an emphasis on this material as a key asset for his commission pieces.
The Man Behind Eric Person
Despite their impressive nature, his artistic qualities are far from the only noteworthy endeavors he is involved in. Removed from the studio, Eric is both plain and ordinary in his choice of clothes and demeanor, yet exceptional when the width of his heart is taken into consideration. His “day job” is nothing overtly fabulous, as he enjoys his employment at a program for high school students with special needs. He has an innate connection with them, one he has no shame in discussing – he is legally blind with “one good eye” helping him to get by.
His students admire his work, and he in turn admires their overwhelming kindness. He brings out the best of them mostly by way of having had to bring the best out of himself; despite the obstacles in his way, Eric Person has cast his gaze upon many a canvas and left it a striking, if sometimes unsettling, masterpiece that demonstrates the interconnectedness of life through the blending of oils and figures.
Jesse Pohlman - Jesse Pohlman is an avid writer and a researcher of pretty much anything. His latest novel, Physics Incarnate, is available for Kindle.
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