A Lot of Ghosts: An Interview with Erik Adriel Peterson

by Kimi Pryor

“3 A.M. Anxiety Smoke”, mixed media on panel, 10” x 10”, 2018.

“There exists for each one of us an oneiric house, a house of dream-memory, that is lost in the shadow of a beyond of the real past… In order to sense, across the years, our attachment for the house we were born in, dream is more powerful than thought. It is our unconscious force that crystalizes our remotest memories.”

– Gaston Bachelard, “The Poetics of Space”

I first met Erik Adriel Peterson at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts during the first day of graduate Orientation. We quickly bonded and went out for drinks afterward to process the overwhelming whirlwind of events. Erik was smart, funny and sensitive; a Lyme Academy of Fine Arts graduate and atelier-trained artist from Connecticut; serious about his craft and accomplished in figurative drawing and printmaking. During his time at PAFA, he made increasingly ambitious drawings (eventually mural-sized in chalk), of metaphysical, classical spaces and arcades; sinewy, contorted figures; and symbolist imagery indicating realms of psychological space or glimpses into another reality (perhaps what DeChirico referred to as “symbols of a superior reality”).

“Horny Stranger’s House”, mixed media on panel, 12″ x 12″, 2019.

I was excited to see Erik’s post-PAFA practice incorporate painting and color in order to explore aspects of his life occurring across multiple dimensions; in the everyday, in the dreaming mind, captured on social media, or recalled in trances or memories. I especially wanted to interview Erik about his newer personal narrative works because of how richly haunted they seemed; by the paper-thin phantoms of lovers, by his surfacing past-life memories, by the demons and shadowy dream fragments infiltrating his contemporary scenes of selfies, hook-ups, and cigarette breaks.

The square panels, evoking Instagram grids, serve as windows into Erik’s social and interior life. The viewer is reminded of a juxtaposition of influences: Italianate art; Hockney’s quiet depictions of gay domestic scenes; Leon Golub’s brutal, mythology-inspired paintings; Kahlo’s brightly colored depictions of spiritual pain; Martin Wong’s magical realist portrayals of same-sex couples embracing amidst crumbling cityscapes. 

“Dream House”, mixed media on panel, 8″ x 8″, 2018.

In person, Erik is thoughtful, composed, and frequently hilarious. During our interview he lucidly spoke to a history of trauma, depression, and pain with self-aware humor and candor. Though the subject matter was often grim, the interview itself was fascinating, comfortable, and filled with laughter. The conversation off the record was just as rich as on record, if not more so, and at an hour-and-a-half running time, it was difficult to edit the interview down to print from an unwieldy 40 pages. Erik generously cooked us a delicious fish taco dinner and we sat in his apartment garden drinking beer before proceeding to his austere studio upstairs.

Erik made us delicious fish tacos.

Erik’s subjects often seem spectral; dissolving into immateriality or cut-off in composition or mirror reflection. You sense that Erik and his languorous visitors are literally ghosting each other,  more like fading ideas or figures disappearing from a Polaroid than the captured denizens of Instagram. From the titles of the pieces, (“Horny Stranger’s House” being one of them), one ascertains that the mood might seem strange because the partners are literally psychic strangers, their paths twined from online meetings. It’s telling that the scenes portray the moments just before or after physical intimacy, not during. Whatever connection has happened is already fading away as the partners listlessly roll over to pull on their pants, use the bathroom, check their phone, or go smoke. These moments of realism, vulnerability and sensuality are tempered with analytical humor and more than a twinge of cynicism and alienation. 

“I’m Adding Us to My Story”, mixed media on panel, 8″ x 8″, 2016.

There are numerous modes of the gaze and the uncanny co-existing: doubling and framing devices appear repeatedly through mirror selfies and voyeuristic snapshots, doubled bathroom stalls and twin doorways. Pale partners and thorn-pierced shadows carry the same energetic weight. Mark Fisher in his essay “The Weird and the Eerie” refers to the mode of the eerie as “the failure of presence”. It is this encroaching sense of absence – of the partners departing the bed or the room, or the absence of Erik or the subject taking the photo (only their reflections presenting themselves) – which takes the viewer into the realm of the unheimlich. 

“Never Knew How I Ached”, mixed media on panel, 10″ x 10″, 2017.

Erik studied at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts in Old Lyme, CT, and received his Post-Baccalaureate in 2015 from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He currently has work available to view at the “Stilled Life” member’s exhibit at Da Vinci Art Alliance , as well as 8-10 paintings available to view at El Poquito Cantina in Chestnut Hill, through the end of August, and was recently included in “Civil Disobedience: Celebrating Queer Narratives” at International House Philadelphia. 

“Awaiting Instructions”, mixed media on panel, 12″ x 12″, 2018.

KP: (upon finding out that her Google doc interview still loads despite Erik’s apartment having no wi-fi): Thank the Good Lord! Sorry! Is that offensive to you as a pagan? 

EAP: (laughing) Get out of my house!

KP: Let’s start officially. Did you do anything for Pride? 

EAP: I worked during Pride at my Uncle’s bar in the Gayborhood. It was crazy. Saturday, there was a queer block party so we spent the morning setting up, and it was really beautiful. Sunday was the Pride Parade. I stayed for three hours and got really sick and went home and fell asleep.

KP: That’s sad! I’m sorry to hear that. Where are you from? Tell me about yourself. 

EAP: Oh! Okaay. We’re going there… 

KP: Is that a bad place to start? Should we start on more neutral territory? 

EAP: No, it’s fine. I’m from Colchester, CT. It’s in Southeastern CT, so it’s a small town, or it was a small town when I was there, like 5000, now it’s closer to 15 – 20,000.

KP: What was the culture like there? 

EAP: Farms. My mothers had a barn that we would tend to after school and at one point we had chickens and horses, sheep and cows. So I went from countryside/suburban living, where I was the only openly gay person in my high school at the time, to – after I came out – sixteen people or so came out to me that following summer. 

KP: Wow! 

EAP: Yeah, so I knew I wasn’t alone. But no one knew how to talk about it. And people felt comfortable with me, in part because I was the artist in high school, and also people knew that my Mom was gay, so they thought I’d be more equipped to talk about things with them. So a lot of people trusted me. 

“I’m Not Racist, I’m Just Balding”, mixed media on panel, 8″ x 8″, 2016.

KP: What was it like being the only openly gay person in your high school? 

EAP: It felt like having a special ability that nobody knew about or could understand. I wouldn’t say it was like having a secret, but it was sort of like having a perspective that you didn’t think anyone could relate to – until other people came out and had those same realizations. But it was very isolating. You had to find ways to not talk about it, which is hard as a teenager experiencing sexual desire and puberty. You want to talk about those things – but not when it’s different, not when it’s in opposition to everyone else around you, so you end up not saying anything. 

And I even convinced myself at one point that I was asexual, and devoid of sexual desire, – because I thought that that would make more sense than possibly being gay and having different desires than my guy friends – I got to that point where I felt like I was holding things back from other people and myself, and constantly lying, and that didn’t feel good. When I was in my senior year of high school, I finally came out. But it did give me a sense of identity in a way, because I went from being kind of invisible  – I had moppy hair, wore corduroy every day, I wasn’t attractive or interesting to other people, (laughs) just like a frumpy high school boy, kind of chunky and also really sick. I was gaining weight and not feeling like myself, and my bodily appearance was changing all the time. 

“Did I Leave My Underwear At Your Place?”, mixed media on panel, 14” x 14”, 2019.

KP: What was going on there? 

EAP: I had my first kidney transplant in 2000, and was pretty good until 2005, when I was fifteen, sophomore year. Then I started doing experimental treatments, which took me out of school for weeks, so I spent all of that time making paintings in my sketchbook. At the time, they were little gouache studies. But the treatments lasted a long time, so I spent all that time making art and that’s what got me into college. Because I bombed my SATs, but had a really good portfolio and took AP Art and AP English and was able to get into what was at the time called The Art Institute of Boston. 

I went there because I wanted to get out of my small town. When you’re from CT, really your two options are Boston or NY, and NY was too scary for me, so I chose Boston. It was far enough away to feel some sense of independence but close enough if anything bad happened. I was there for a year, then I got too sick to stay and moved back home in CT. I ended up transferring to The Lyme Academy of Fine Arts in CT. But now that is gone, The University of New Haven bought it and closed it.

KP: The Lyme Academy is very prestigious, traditional. How was that for you? 

EAP: It was great. Although it was not what I wanted when I got there, it ended up being a really incredible experience. One of my biggest problems in Boston was that I didn’t feel challenged. People were there for very different reasons, none that I understood or wanted to be a part of. They had an amazing animation and photography department, but I realized it was more of a design school than a fine arts school, and I really craved that sort of atelier-style dedication to something. I remember my art teacher telling me Picasso said, “You have to know the rules to break them”, and I took that to heart for years and thought, “OK, I want to know the rules to painting and drawing, and I really want to dedicate myself to this.” I thought it was something that would never get boring, having a strong foundation. 

“Sanctuary”, mixed media on paper, 2013.

KP: Do you feel that a rigorous academic setting is the best training ground for artists? 

EAP: For myself, yes. It was the structure I needed to lay out the framework for what I wanted to do. I never wanted to be in a position where I had an idea that I didn’t know how to do or accomplish. Which is a natural thing, but it makes me uncomfortable. It’s a horrible feeling…

KP: Having no tools in your toolkit? (laughs)

EAP: Yeah, it’s a horrible feeling! So I just learned. A lot of it was through experimentation with media and mixed media. I realized I couldn’t stick with one tool, which was what was sort of encouraged at Lyme Academy, either you sculpt with marble or paint with oils…

KP: Mixed media wasn’t encouraged at Lyme Academy?

EAP: It’s not that it wasn’t encouraged, they didn’t know how to approach it. At the time I was doing a lot of figurative walnut ink drawings, which I saw as studies and they saw as finished pieces that I could develop in terms of mastering a technique. They had an obsession with mastering technique. And I thought, “Do I want to be decent at a lot of different things or be really good at one thing?” And I chose doing a few different things.

So to get away from walnut inks I started doing xerox transfers, from my own drawings printed onto wood, and then worked on top of there. That allowed a multilayered mixed media process which made drawing more interesting to me and added an element of printmaking and painting. That’s what sparked my interest in mixed media. 

KP: I ran into (artist, PAFA critic, and professor) Mark Blavat last night and he described you as a contrarian (Erik laughs), which I believe stemmed from your work in the Post-Bacc where you were a classically trained artist making these huge academic, sinewy, muscular figurative chalk drawings which you would then erase. How frequently would you erase them? 

EAP: After every one was finished. So, after every critique.

KP: He said that was interesting, because in an atelier everything leads toward the idea of preservation, and here you’re deliberately creating drawings with the intention to destroy them. To me that reminds me of the Tibetan Buddhist monks who spend days making sand mandalas, knowing they’ll be ritually destroyed to acknowledge the transitory nature of life…

EAP: (nodding): Yeah.

KP: So that inspired your process? 

EAP: Yeah, a lot of temporary works were definitely my inspiration, but it was also a matter of budget. I moved here with almost nothing, maybe just a few hundred dollars, so I bought some chalkboard paint and chalk to start. I thought that would be a good way to keep drawing without spending the money on paper and all the supplies. So I stuck with that and photographed and documented almost everything and created a slideshow at the end of the year of all the drawings, and that was good. It was cool too, ‘cause no one could buy anything. Although I don’t feel that way now, I thought it was a really good way for people to find interest in it, knowing that they couldn’t have it. 

KP: So do you think your spiritual interests are kind of at odds with the commercial part of art-making?

EAP: Absolutely. Only recently did I start merging those two things. So the merge happened a few years ago, then I… how do I talk about this without sounding crazy?

KP: Sound crazy! It’s good for the interview. 

EAP: A friend of mine had asked me for help in looking into what was wrong with him. He felt like something was following him for years. Naively I was like, okay, let me look into this for you. I work remotely, meaning I can be in one space and appear or travel to others, so I don’t have to physically be in front of people or places. I was in Florida at the time, right before I moved here. I visited him in his house in New Jersey and started cutting into his body – in the astral sense not the physical sense – rooting around, pulling things out. As I got to his chest, a hand came through and grabbed me through his body.  I pulled it out and this figure appeared behind me, covered in slime. A muscular, beady-eyed figure covered in grime and slime and charged at me! I managed to send it away but it definitely left an imprint on me. I got out of the trance and my stepmom came home and the first thing she said was, “What did you do?” She could sense it immediately in the house, so we did a cleansing then and there but it still had a grip on me. And what my friend didn’t tell me is that he was struggling with a heroin addiction. 

“Was All I Could See”, mixed media on panel, 8″ x 10″, 2018.

KP: That’s why it was slimy and sticky!

EAP: I guess so! For years he was dealing with this and I didn’t know about it. What’s even creepier is that he later took photos of himself, like in bathroom mirrors, and eventually this thing did appear in a photograph. 

KP: No way! 

EAP: Yeah, just a sliver, behind a door. 

KP: Did he notice it or did you? 

EAP: He noticed it and sent it to me. And it was exactly what I had seen in trance. So it stuck with me for the better part of a year, and I went back to certain addictions. I was drinking heavily, smoking, abusing painkillers, doing all I could to self-destruct unconsciously. 

“Head Above Water”, mixed media on panel, 10″ x 10″, 2018.

KP: When was this? 

EAP: 2014. It was that first year at PAFA, here in Philadelphia. 

KP: When did you start a Shamanic practice? How did that come about? 

EAP: I was like fourteen or so, so 2004. It was during that time I was really sick, freshman to sophomore year. I started practicing meditation because I thought it’d be a good way to pass the time. I remember staring into a candle, – my first conscious experience, and suddenly this raven’s head appeared right in my field of vision, surrounded by gold light, and spread its wings and stood there. When I got out of it, two hours had passed during the time I thought was around five minutes. The candle was out. 

I was getting into breathing techniques and different ways to handle anxiety. I had an urge to get into herbalism, study plants and medicine. I got this book at a Renaissance Faire, an herbal tea book, and I started making every recipe in that book for myself and my family. When I was really sick, I would have dreams of different animals bringing me different herbs and plants every night for a long period of time, and I would add those to my teas. So going back to that piece, the demon thing, I don’t really want to call it a demon…

KP: The shadow figure. 

EAP: It was almost following me, it wasn’t quite with me but I felt it’s touch for a long time. So I made that piece in reaction to it. Kind of ritualistically… It’s finger painting, I sculpted it with my hands to try and bind it to the piece. I like to think it’s kind of trapped in there. I think of that painting as a spirit object, but it’s probably the only one. 

KP: (whispering) I love haunted paintings. 

EAP: (laughs)

KP: I just wish there were more movies about haunted paintings! 

EAP: Oh my God, me too! 

KP: It’s so interesting to me. But let’s get back to covering the basics. Where are we? Where do you live? 

EAP: Oh! We are in Point Breeze, Philadelphia! In South Philly, where the houses are made of paper and you can hear everything. I can hear conversations from two blocks away.

KP: How long have you lived here? 

EAP: Three years? 

KP: Describe your studio.

EAP: Oof. It’s my old bedroom. It’s a small studio space now. 

Erik’s studio in South Philadelphia, June 2019.

KP: Did you paint it gray? 

EAP: No, it came that way! 

KP: I like it. It’s like the gray palette paper that shows off the colors. 

EAP: Yeah, I’m really into it! It’s not very good lighting but it’s workable. But I kind of like that too because I’m a little bit color blind, so I don’t mind having bad lighting. 

KP: So what can you see? What can you not see? 

EAP: It’s hard when things are close in temperature or intensity. I can see value well but when things are too close it’s hard. When they’re really dark or all the same sort of temperature, that’s when it gets difficult.

KP: You can’t differentiate where one begins and one ends? 

EAP: Right, normally. So I actually section areas off with tape and then create palette for each section, knowing it will come out differently once I remove the tape. They’re also segmented through different varnishes, whether it’s matte or glossy helps me to define the space. And then using the different materials, paper or wood. 

KP: I feel like these paintings are very composed. So what is your process? How do you start these mixed-media pieces? 

EAP:  I take tons of photos when I’m out, whether I’m visiting a friend in their house or sometimes a booty call, I’m taking photos of their space. Rarely of them, because I feel like that’s more of an invasion. I will make those into squares right away, so I find the composition in the square format immediately.  If you remember, having a square format in art used to be unusual. In art school everything was a rectangle and you had to work within that rectangle. I think Instagram has really challenged that and changed a new generation into thinking that a square is a perfectly fine format. It started off as just a challenge to myself, as in “Can I make square paintings?” I’d say yes at this point, but at the time it was really hard, and Instagram made it a lot easier because things were forced into that box. 

“No Sex, Just Talking”, mixed media on panel, 10″ x 10″, 2018.

KP: Yeah, at this point we’re definitely used to seeing snapshots of our lives forced into these little icons of social media history so that’s how I was viewing your newer work as well. 

EAP: These young kids have no idea that the square was unusual. No one ever told them that, and so they’re comfortable shooting in square on their own cameras, printing squares, and I’m like, “Wow. This is so different.”

KP: So you make them into squares right away and then you draw? 

EAP: I cut paper into shapes to form the composition. I never measure, so it’s all just by looking at it. Once I start measuring I get too exact and it takes away the life of the piece for me. There’s some work that looks amazing when they’re that exact, but I think mine would just look very bad, frankly. I cut the paper, slap it down, and go from there. I stick within those parameters. It’s a situation where limits are good. You create the limit of the square, you create the limit of the shape of the paper, and then you limit yourself less so but even with your materials. So I could be using the same paints and colored pencils on each side, but they’re appearing differently whether it’s on the wood or the paper, so that creates depth in the 2D.

“Night After Night”, painting on paper mounted on panel, 10″ x 10″, 2017.

KP: So you’re pasting it down on top of your painting? You’re affixing it? 

EAP: The first thing I did on this one (gestures) is glue this strip of paper down, and then just started drawing from there, and then I massed it out with larger shapes. I draw it all out as much as I can – not the figures, just the environment. I draw it out with colored pencil and then go to painting and layering, and take things away or use tape to lift the paint, or even sandpaper if I need to push things back further or bring back something I lost from before. Once I have those initial parameters, the rest is sort of a gamble. A piece can only push itself so far. Eventually it ends, but only after pretty intense working. Like every artist, you figure out what overworking is for yourself. I don’t think about that with these anymore. 

Then the other spirit-related pieces are that big house there…

“Hadn’t Know What He’d Done”, mixed media on panel, 18″ x 24″, 2019.

KP: Yeah, let’s talk about that. 

EAP: So the house is a past life memory that I received through lucid dreaming, where I had taken a train from Prague to the countryside, and I knew that I was a doctor –  I had gray hairs and was a bit older – but very put together, efficient, doctorly, and I arrived at this house and the lady of the house welcomed me in. It was a scheduled visit for me to vaccinate the kids, and from what I could tell they were suffering from some sort of illness or had some deformities or were just poor, a lot of Romani children.

So I went one by one to all their room and gave them their vaccines and then left back to Prague. Then I got word that all the children had died.  I had been used by the Nazi party to involuntarily euthanize those kids, which was a very common practice, it turns out. I then did research about that after the fact and discovered some pretty horrifying things. When I heard that news, I killed myself in my office. So that was pretty horrible to talk about, but I wanted to just kind of memorialize it… do it so I wouldn’t forget. 

KP: That’s intense. Had you ever heard of that practice before or was it totally new to you? 

EAP: It was a totally new thing for me. I was receiving a lot of very lucid dreams that ended up being more than dreams later on. You kind of piece those things together as you go along.

KP: So it wasn’t a trance practice, it was a lucid dream, like a nighttime dream? 

EAP: That one was. But those things kind of go hand in hand, once you get into a trance practice, those things happen to you more easily when you’re at rest. It can happen during a nap or regular sleep. That one was not a voluntary regression, but that’s what happens over time. Those things just present themselves to you the more you work towards them. 

KP: Is this going to lead to a series at all or do you feel this is a one-off piece that has served its purpose? 

EAP: I feel like that one in particular is a one-off piece. I really love this piece, but I’m afraid … it’s kind of like making a series into a movie that ends up being really bad, like I want to leave it just as it is without risking making a terrible child. So I’m going to let that one be, but I think it’s fun how it relates to the other paintings in that these are rooms, possibly within that house. I never show outside of these rooms when I’m making these paintings, and I never thought about that until I made that house, and until I made the popsicle stick house. I was showing those houses as entities in and of themselves when I’ve been making works about these individual rooms this whole time. So are these individual rooms part of a much bigger house? And part of a bigger entity which holds the information to everything? That’s been fun to think about.

And only three of the paintings take place outside right now, and those are on the patio, so even those are an extension of the house. Part of it too is when you move to a city, you spend a lot more time in houses and around architecture, so you experience more inside and therefore want to paint those things. I think if were to move to the countryside again my work would definitely change. 

KP: What is the story of this popsicle house? 

“The House That Never Was”, popsicle sticks, acrylic, and wood stain, 2019.

“All great, simple images reveal a psychic state. The house, even more than the landscape, is a “psychic state,” and even when reproduced as it appears from the outside, it bespeaks intimacy… If the child is unhappy, the house bears traces of his distress”

– Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics Of Space

EAP: That is a recurring dream. The way you can tell what is a dream and what is more than a dream, oftentimes, is in dreams you recall things from your life, your childhood or your everyday life or conversations you had. Those you kind of relive as dreams. When it’s more than that, it’s something that is completely unknown to you that reveals itself and those are the ones that people remember, because they’re so out of the ordinary that they have no choice but to recall them, because they’re not going to blend into everyday life. So with the popsicle stick house, this is a home from a recurring dream, where I’m in this fictionalized house in a sort of parallel world of our childhood barn. And the land around it is familiar as that but is not that at the same time. In this house there’s a lot of ghosts (laughs) and it’s me as a child again. And my whole family. So there’s eight of us living in this house, but with all these ghosts. 

KP: What kind of ghosts? 

EAP: They’re just normal. They’re not scary, they just are there. They’re kind of part of the family, but a little bit in the shadows, not quite at the dinner table. And I have this dream over and over again of living in this house and going through a normal day, with these ghosts. So I wanted to recreate that from memory, and be able to do a one-minute video around this house. Not really sure how that’s going to go, but looking forward to doing something with that. 

KP: So are the ghosts the previous inhabitants of this house? 

EAP: It’s possible. That’s a very good deduction for sure. I think part of that too is all the houses we’ve lived in have been haunted, and one house in particular was an old farmhouse built in 1880 or so – which is not that old for New England but pretty old – so on the first floor, the smell of rose perfume would travel the whole floor and we thought, “This is very lovely, nothing to worry about”. But on the second floor was a very menacing presence, and all of us would see the shadow mass of a tall gentleman in the hallway, behind a door, hiding in plain sight, and it got very scary.  So I think part of it is my memory from that, kind of recreating itself in this alternate multiverse kind of existence. Actually in that house we found a hatchet wrapped up in some old fabric in the basement, behind a stone in the wall. We put it right back (laughs)

“The House That Never Was”, popsicle sticks, acrylic, and wood stain, 2019.

KP: Tonally the three works resulting from your spiritual or dream process feel very coherent together. Immediately you can identify these three as a complete series, and all the other works have their own tone which is very different. The paintings from your everyday life and the ones from your spiritual life are very identifiable as different groupings of art. 

EAP: Yeah, and I think a part of that too is I had them separate for so long because I was kind of embarrassed by how my practice would manifest in art work. I thought it would be ridiculous and no one would take it seriously and it would seem very hokey. Because I’ve seen a lot of “spiritual” work that is awful (laughs). I’m not up here painting fairies, you know, so I don’t really advertise it too much as part of my art practice.

KP: I think they have a power to them, though, like a cold, primitive, folkloric power which I really like, which is very different from your other pieces, which have their own eeriness to them. There is a bit of the Surreal and the Eerie in some of your paintings, even though they often have an Instagram/Snapshot aesthetic in the framing, and I think it boils down to the immateriality of yourself and your partners. There’s varying degrees of presence and absence. After you said you took photos of the spaces and not the people, that kind of came together for me in my head, that you are sort of repopulating these empty spaces from memory.

EAP: Thank you. That is a perfect way to say that. A lot of these are based off of experience, but I think experience is subjective and open to change. Say I experience heartache, or have a conversation with someone, whatever the case may be, that feeling you have immediately after sex, I would wait a period of time to paint those things because I wanted to see how much of that I still felt, if I felt the same way about it, if I could remember it correctly, if they ever thought of it again, so all of those things come into play when making these paintings. I’d be the first to say they’re not truthful in that way, they’re not factual, although I guess truth and fact are different things, right? So like, my truth is not your truth.

“Can Withstand the Storm”, mixed media on panel, 16″ x 16″, 2019.

KP: Right, it’s your account of it. And these paintings are accounts of things that have happened. But you’re repopulating them with these residues of people, and they have a ghostly presence to them and there’s a funny tongue-in-cheek thing because you’re dealing with these millenial issues of “ghosting” and that sense of alienated hook-up culture, but you’re also using these eerie levels of visual representation. 

EAP: Yeah, and a lot of it is about detachment and what we seek from others, which is just  reflections of what we want in ourselves. This one here at the bottom is called “Did I Leave My Underwear At Your Place?” and it’s actually a screenshot I took of someone’s Instagram story who I find very attractive. It’s about this unattainable beauty, and having this unquenchable thirst for someone I’ve never really met. Which I think is also a contemporary problem, where we now have access to so many people, so many beautiful people that we’re never going to meet, and we’re never going to have that physical appreciation for them. 

KP: Well, the distance and longing keeps the appreciation alive, right? ‘Cause it’s like the Lacanian thing where everything is beautiful and perfect until you actually achieve the object of your desire and then it turns into shit. 

EAP: So a lot of these are about that, because the people here are not beautiful or beautifully rendered, they’re disproportionate, they’re muddy sometimes, they’re smoking, they’re peeing, there’s some of them on the toilet. They’re not idealized men. But they’re men that I’ve idealized on my own, who I’ve come to realize are not as good as they seem (laughs)

KP: So you think there’s this sense of disenchantment because you’re now familiar with these men? 

EAP: Yes, there’s a level of disenchantment but also mystery because I’m forever the optimist in love, I’ll continue finding the beautiful even in their broken states, even when all the illusions come crashing down. 

“Never Give Up on Patio Dreams, mixed media on panel, 12″ x 12”, 2018.

KP: So you still consider yourself a Romantic? 

EAP: Yeah. 

KP: Yeah. So there’s different levels of the scopophilic gaze here, because there’s men gazing at themselves, at each other through mirrors, through their phones and doorways… we have all these framing devices where they’re regarding their own bodies and each other’s bodies. What were you thinking about in terms of all these framing devices? We have levels of technology, levels of removal, levels of space, like this weird Mannerist zooming back into space… 

EAP: Hmm. Yeah. I love that people see things that I don’t often see when I’m making and it’s only upon later reflection that I notice them. Or until someone else points them out. There’s a sense of voyeurism in a lot of the work, where it has the feeling that the subjects don’t know they’re being photographed or they’re being painted by me. 

KP: Do you think this sort of voyeurism is just par for the course for a generation which spent its adulthood coupled with social media? 

EAP: Yeah, I think there’s that and I think there’s also me wanting to process a person or a relationship after the fact which allows me to put them where I want them in the painting, put them at a level where I’m still the one looking towards them.

KP: So you’re literally placing them in the painting as you attempt to place them in your own personal history. 

EAP: As the maker you can only think about it so much because most of your work is into the making and then it takes someone else to be like, ok, here’s what you did. A lot of these works started with this piece here, this small self-portrait which I did at 4am one morning when I was feeling very manic. So I’m treated for manic-depression now but at that time I wasn’t, and so I just had this urge to make that drawing. And I can show you the piece I did a week before this and it’s completely different. I believe doing this piece changed my brain chemistry. It changed something in me which forced me to change my entire work. 

“Man Afraid of Getting Burns Wet”, mixed media on pane, 6″ x 6″, 2016.

KP: Yeah, so before you were doing this very classic atelier … twisting muscles and torsos, contorted figurative drawing. But this drawing inspired the switch to painting? 

EAP: Yeah, so that kind of triggered the whole thing and I trusted it and went from there, and through my manic spree I did six paintings in a row that were all of a similar nature but they got more and more involved. I set certain restraints on myself, like I had to do one a day, so of course those weren’t as labored as what you’re seeing now, but they were more intuitive, and I just had to get it done. So I was doing those and I sold them all or gave them away, so they’re all gone except “Never Knew How I Ached”, which is probably two years old. So even now you can see which ones were done in a more manic week versus ones which were done when I was more focused or more depressed…you can kind of figure it out based on what’s in front of you. 

KP: Do you think it’s primarily the color?

EAP: I think it’s the use of line, a little bit intensity of color, I think even the composition becomes sloppier or more refined, all those subtle changes happen based on where I’m at for that week. 

KP: Would you say some paintings are an exorcism for you and others are not? 

EAP: Sure, yeah! Some have more urgency to be painted and some are more explorations of painting itself and even just the act of committing to something and seeing it through. 

KP: You didn’t paint at all when I knew you. You were anti-painting!  And you were anti-color! So it’s really nice to see that you’ve made this shift. Do you think it was just this bold arm (gestures to “Man Afraid of Getting Burns Wet”) that opened up a whole new world of possibility?

EAP: It totally did. It changed everything. So this painting is just about having a sunburn in the shower, but also about being completely manic. I actually didn’t have a sunburn at the time, but I had to paint that sensation. 

KP: Right. And just having that color relate to that sensation just opened up a whole new world of possibility! It’s so interesting how you have one little art epiphany that can inspire a whole new method of working.

EAP: Yeah, like years of work after that. It’s so strange, and I think I needed it for sure. I was so trapped in the obsession of wanting to be a good drawer, but there’s only so much you can do with that. And I thought, I’d rather be decent at a few other things and bring it all together to create what I actually want. 

KP: You’ve used other materials in your practice before. You made some altarpieces (at PAFA), you had sculptural situations, right? Are you interested in video, expanding your media? 

EAP: Yeah, I want to continue with the painting. I do make fetish objects in my spiritual practice anyway, so I feel like I’m already making these mini-sculptures, but those have a very particular use. So I would never show those in a gallery setting, because they’re used specifically for my own altar or my own living space. But I would consider making more objects in the future. 

KP: Like when Native American kachina dolls or ritual objects end up in art museums, it’s very problematic because it’s like, these are not intended to be art objects, these are objects which have living value to these tribes… 

EAP: Right, they have a very specific ritualistic value. So it’d feel very weird for me to do the same. 

KP: Who do you look at in art history? Because I see a lot of different references.

EAP: Oof. 

KP: I know we’re both probably de Chirico fans, right? 

EAP: Yeah (laughing)

“In the work of Giotto, too, the architectonic sense creates great metaphysical space. All the openings (doors, arcades, windows) that accompany his figures portend the cosmic mystery”.

– Giorgio de Chirico, “The Architectonic Sense in Ancient Painting”
“Torn From the Clouds/Dug From the Rubble”, mixed media on paper mounted on panel, 10″ x 10″, 2017

KP: Like we both love the arcades and the promenades and the arches…

EAP: God, and the shadows. 

KP: But I see a lot of Renaissance … and like, Hockney, a little bit? 

EAP: Yeah, absolutely. It’s ok to say Hockney! 

“P.E. with Mr. Burns”, mixed media on panel, 12″ x 12″, 2019.

KP: I don’t know why it would be a dirty word or anything, I think he’s a beautiful painter. 

EAP: Yeah, Hockney’s a great painter. It’s so weird how he’s become this cheeky…

KP: I think it’s just because he’s so famous. You don’t want to bring up people that are such big obvious names

EAP: I would definitely say early Hockney for sure. I used to be really moved by Paul Cadmus, another gay painter. But more recently I’ve been looking into Édouard Vuillard, the French painter, just for his sense of brushstroke and color and pattern, and nearly all of his paintings are in a domestic setting. So he’s been a huge influence, and he also has an amazing way of blending texture with light and form, where it can all look like one plane until you start breaking it down and you realize it’s an entire scene. But then some things are very painterly and contrast-heavy and that creates a different feeling for sure. He’s a huge source of inspiration. And my gallery representative used to tell potential buyers that I was heavily influenced by Japanese woodcuts. 

KP: Is that true? (laughs)

EAP: It’s not something I thought about until he was telling people! 

KP: So he just pulled that out of his ass? 

EAP: It’s what he was seeing in my work! He would tell people that’s what he saw. 

KP: Because of the flatness? Oh, and the bathing figures and the disrobing, maybe?

EAP: There’s that, and there’s the way the picture plane is broken up and ordered and sectioned. 

“We’ve All Been There (Emergency Underwear)”, mixed media on panel, 12″ x 12″, 2018.

KP: I don’t see that that much. 

EAP: Yeah, not so much, but in terms of the color-blocking yes, because that’s what they had to do in a wood-cut. 

KP:  I guess. Do you like Fischl? 

EAP: No. (Both laugh hysterically). 

KP:  I don’t either, but I feel like…

EAP: No, he’s a showboat. 

KP: Are you looking at contemporary painting? 

EAP: Being on Instagram, you start using certain hashtags like “#emergingartist, #queerartist, and you find other like-minded painters, and you see what they’re doing and you’re doing and what you’re both not doing, but some people who have really worked for themselves are people like Jonathan (Lyndon Chase), obviously, and Lou Fratino, who’s doing a modernist queer experience…

KP: Almost Cubist. 

EAP: Almost Cubist, right! And I have to say I love his drawings way more than his paintings. His little drawings are incredible. Kyle Vudunn’s curvy mannerist figure paintings are really fun. He builds up on gesso and breaks things up with light really well. I’ve noticed a lot of contemporary queer painting is hyper-sexualized and ultra intimate. And until lately, that has not been my experience as a gay man. I think a lot of that comes from my own insecurities and illnesses in my past that have prevented me from having a sexually healthy development, but in a lot of my works, no one’s touching. There’s very rarely two people. Constant touching is a lie. I think that sensation of romance is not very truthful for most gay people, because it’s not very easy to find. You’re already dealing with 1/10th of the population (laughs). I’m more interested in depicting the moments before or after those rare intimate moments. 

“Rainy Day Haircut”, mixed media on panel, 8″ x 8″, 2016.

KP: I feel like you’re a pretty private person but these newer paintings are very raw and personal and exposed, dealing with desire and the agency of male bodies looking at themselves and other male bodies. Was this level of intimacy a natural progression for you or something you deliberately sought? 

EAP: Yes, something I had to seek for sure. A lot of that comes from body dysmorphia. After having 29 surgeries, you don’t feel like your body matures. Every surgery is an assault on your body and how you feel about your own body. I believed it was a hard challenge to find someone who could look past those things and see me as a desirable sexual person. The truth is a lot of those feelings were just in myself, and other people weren’t experiencing that, but it doesn’t change the fact that that’s how I felt for so long. So there’s a lot of hesitation in my work too about intimacy. 

KP: What are your favorite works of art that you’ve ever seen in person? 

EAP: Ooh. Ok. Who’s the German guy who was a medic? Max Beckmann. The last painting he made before he died. “Einzelansicht”. I saw it at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in Stuttgart. The other one was an Odilon Redon painting, the one with the bright red sun at the Barnes, “St. George and the Dragon”. Honestly, you can pick any Redon painting. 

“Italy Has Angels”, mixed media on panel, 10″ x 10″, 2019.

KP: Are you into the Symbolists? 

EAP: Yeah. I was for a long, long time. 

KP: What do you think of Philadelphia and the Philly art scene? 

EAP: Ooh. Girl. 

KP: Give it to me straight. No holding back! 

EAP: I think Philadelphia is at odds with itself. I think it’s battling between retaining authenticity in art, and seeking both validation and money. Philly has this weird complex, like we feel it’s not good enough. I think the whole city feels that way. So we recreate successes from other cities without realizing we have a lot to offer on our own. Even our really good artists end up in New York, because they think that’s the only way they can be seen and be purchased. While I’m not bound to Philadelphia, I do seek to continue successfully making work here, and leave food service to go into teaching or into a more academic path, something less physical, have a more stable foundation. 

KP: Do you think this city supports LGBTQ+ artists? Artists in general? 

EAP: I think artists support artists, I don’t think the city does. I don’t think museums or institutions are doing anything out of the ordinary to assist us. They have very little to offer, if anything. 

KP: What does living the dream look like for you? 

EAP: Ok, my absolute dream? Three story home, first floor is a small tea/coffee shop, I live on the second floor, third floor is a studio space. Of course with a husband and a dog. A gray pit bull. 

To see more of Erik’s work, visit his website and Instagram

Tags: No tags

Comments are closed.