James Erikson is an artist and librarian from Philadelphia. He makes paintings, prints, artists’ books, drawings, and sculptures. Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, at an early age he moved to rural Central Pennsylvania. There he spent a childhood immersed in the fields and woods that have influenced his paintings ever since. He has shown his work in galleries in Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio. Erikson received his MFA from SUNY Purchase and his MLS from CUNY Queens.

 

Statement

My practice moves between oil painting, collage, and water-based media on paper—approaches that allow me to explore abstraction from multiple perspectives. Collage functions as a generative space, an experimental laboratory where I break apart familiar structures, rearrange them, and push the work into new territories. Through acts of deconstruction and reconstruction, new pathways emerge that later inform and expand the language of my paintings.

While abstract, the work remains grounded in both natural and built environments. Shapes and spatial relationships echo fragments of architecture, while color is drawn from the shifting tones of landscape and organic forms. I am particularly interested in light, texture, structure, memory, and place—exploring how light and space interact and the emotional responses they can evoke.

A strong emphasis on craft underpins my process: linen, oil paint, the textures of paper, and considerations of scale in relation to the human body all play a central role. Each piece becomes a negotiation between intuition and intention. I follow the prompts of the materials, allowing scale, textures, and color relationships to guide me toward forms that feel at once familiar and newly discovered.

Ultimately, my work seeks to create images that carry the resonance of place without relying on literal representation—inviting viewers to experience abstraction as a pathway to memory, emotion, and lived experience.