CV

Erik ReeL

Born 1952, Seattle


Selected Solo and Two-Person Shows


2024

Street, Laura Vincent Gallery, Portland, Oregon


2023

What is so lovely about the end of the world?  PLACE, Portland, Oregon

 

2018

Zero Point, GraySpace Gallery, Santa Barbara, California


2017

Epiphany, Porch Gallery, Ojai, California 


2016

Full Circle, Morris Graves Museum of Art, Eureka, California

 

2014

Silence, SCIART, Camarillo, California

Rebar at the Tool Room, Museum of Ventura County, Ventura, California

Standing in Boots, with Nash Rightmer, WAV Projects, Ventura, California


2013

Tabula Rasa, 643 Project Space, Ventura, California 


2012

60 @ 60, Sixty Paintings at 60 Years, Ventura, California


2011

Markings,  B Street Project Space, Oxnard, California

Signs of a Lost Civilization, Vita Arts Center, Bell Arts Factory, Ventura, California 


2009

Viva la Vida, Laurel Ventura Gallery, Ventura, California

Turbulence, with Vonder Gray, Galerie 251, Ventura, California


2008

Caruso Woods Gallery, Santa Barbara, California

University of California Santa Barbara, Faculty Club


2006

Caruso Woods Gallery, Santa Barbara, California


2005

Caruso Woods Gallery, Santa Barbara, California


2004

Caruso Woods Gallery, Santa Barbara, California


2003

Delphine Gallery, Santa Barbara, California

University of California Santa Barbara, Faculty Club


2002

Delphine Gallery, Santa Barbara, California

University of California Santa Barbara, Faculty Club


2001

Delphine Gallery, Santa Barbara, California

University of California Santa Barbara, Faculty Club


2000

Delphine Gallery, Santa Barbara, California


1987

Mazey Hickey Gallery, Seattle, Washington


1986

Whatcom County Museum, Bellingham, Washington


1985

Jackson Street, Gallery, Seattle, Washington 


1984

Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, Washington

Cornish Institute of Allied Arts, Seattle, Washington

Jackson Street, Gallery, Seattle, Washington


1983

Jackson Street, Gallery, Seattle, Washington

Silver Birds, performance, Poetry Seattle, Washington


1982

The Warehouse Paintings, Vogue, Seattle, Washington

Performance with Sue Ann Harkey, Seattle Art Museum Pavilion, Seattle, Washington 

A Reading After Robbe-Grillet, performance with K. Hunt, Poetry Seattle, Washington


1981

and/or, Seattle, Washington

Performance with  Sue Ann Harkey, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington


1979

Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington


1978

A Reading After Robbe Grillet, performance, Cabaret Apocalypse, Seattle


1977

Alexander Sasanoff Gallery, Seattle, Washington


1975

Alexander Sasanoff, Seattle, Washington



Selected Collective Shows


2025

FACT: Fashion and Art Create Tomorrow, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington


2018

Butler Institute for American Art, Youngstown, Ohio 


2017

From the Collection, Morris Graves Museum of Art, Eureka, California

Art For Living, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea 

Objects of Impossibility: Contemporary Abstraction, Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara, California 


2016

For the Earth: Art for Global Ecology, Postmodern, Washington DC 


2015

Out of the Great Wide Open, Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara, California

Museum of Ventura County, Ventura, California

Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara, California


2014 

Museum of Ventura County, Ventura, California

Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara, California


2013

Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara, California 

SCIART, Camarillo, California 

Elizabeth Gordon Gallery, Santa Barbara, California

Working Artists Ventura (WAV) Project Space, Ventura, California


2012

SCIART, Camarillo, California

Vita Art Center, Bell Arts Factory, Ventura, California


2011

Vita Art Center, Bell Arts Factory, Ventura, California


2010 

Print Electronico, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Epocha Nueva, Casa Del Mexicano, Santa Paula, California

Vita Art Center, Bell Arts Factory, Ventura, California


2009

Museum of Ventura County, Ventura, California

California State University Channel IslandsCamarillo, California

Viva la Vida, Laurel Ventura Gallery, Ventura, California 


2008

Caruso Woods Gallery, Santa Barbara, California 

I-5 Gallery, Los Angeles, California

Erik ReeL and Friends at the Love House, Ventura, California

Galerie 251, Ventura, California


2007

Rainbow Alliance Show, Rainbow Alliance LGBTQ+ Support Network, Ventura, California

Caruso Woods Gallery, Santa Barbara, California 


2006

Picasso, Chagall, and Contemporary Master Prints, Modern Masters Gallery, Palm Desert, California 

Caruso Woods Gallery, Santa Barbara, California

Elizabeth Edwards Gallery, Palm Desert, California


2005

Caruso Woods Gallery, Santa Barbara, California

Elizabeth Edwards Gallery, Palm Desert, California  


2004

71st SAGA Annual Print Show, Society of American Graphic Artists [SAGA], New York City

17th Parkside National Print Exhibition, University of Wisconsin

Works on Paper, curated: Matthew Pruit, Menil Sr Curator, McNeese State University, Louisiana

7th Annual National, Montpelier Center for the Arts, Montpelier, Virginia

24th National Print Exhibition, ArtLink Contemporary, Fort Wayne, Indiana

14th Annual International, Las Vegas Center for Art and Design, Las Vegas, New Mexico

Landscape Unlimited, International survey of abstract landscape, Chicago, Illinois

Caruso Woods Gallery, Santa Barbara, California


2003

Lisa Kurts Gallery, Memphis, Tennessee

Linda Moore Gallery, San Diego, California

Penumbral/Palindrome, scrim, Signal+Noise, Media Arts & Technology, Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE), UCSB

Elizabeth Edwards Gallery, Palm Desert, California


2002

Lisa Kurts Gallery, Memphis, Tennessee

Delphine Gallery, Santa Barbara, California

Contemporary Art Forum Santa Barbara, California


2001

Contemporary Art Forum, Santa Barbara, California

Delphine Gallery, Santa Barbara, California


2000

Artists For World Peace, Pavilion for World Peace, Kobe, Japan

Contemporary Art Forum, Santa Barbara, California

Delphine Gallery, Santa Barbara, California

Karpeles Museum and Manuscript Library, Santa Barbara, California


1999

Delphine Gallery, Santa Barbara, California


1986

Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle , Washington


1985

New York, LA, Seattle, Center on Contemporary Art (COCA), Seattle, Los Angeles, New York

Seattle Art Museum, curated: Gene Barto, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Seattle, Washington

Jackson Street Gallery, Seattle, Washington


1984

City of Seattle Collects, curated: Howard Fox, senior curator LACMA, Seattle Art Museum Pavilion

Performance, Cornish Institute of Allied Arts, Seattle, Washington

Burning Angels, performance with dancers, Virginia Street Studio, Seattle, Washington

Jackson Street Gallery, Seattle, Washington 


1983

Jackson Street Gallery, Seattle, Washington

Performance with Stuart Dempster, Kathleen Hunt, Polly Friedlander Gallery, Seattle, Washington


1980

Foster/White Gallery, Seattle, Washington


1979

William Traver Gallery, Seattle, Washington

Kodak International, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC


1978

6500 x 20,, and/or, Seattle, Washington

Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, Washington

Nacreous Passion, performance choreographed by K. Hunt, Washington Hall, Seattle, Washington


1977

Flux Fest, curated: George Maciunas, and/or, Seattle, Washington 


1976

Tenth National Drawing Show, curated: Wayne Thiebaud, Del Mar Museum, Corpus Christie, Texas 


Education


1980-82 University of Washington, graduate study in art history, critical theory

1975 BA summa cum laude, University of Washington, Seattle

1974 University of California, Berkeley
1971-73 Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington

 

Collections


Represented in private collections based in Barcelona, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Dubai, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Houston, Indianapolis, London, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Montreal, New York City, Oakland, Paris, San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Barbara,  Santa Fe [NM], Seattle, and Seoul. Public collections include the Morris Graves Museum of Art, Seattle City Light, City of Seattle, Czong Institute of Contemporary Art, Museum of Ventura County, Whitman College.


Teaching


Color Theory for Professionals, Pioneer Square Art Education Foundation, Seattle 1981-1984

University of Washington, Seattle, art history as graduate student TA 1980

Seattle Central College, color theory, painting, life drawing, art history, design 1978-1983

Fort Worden Gifted High School Program, Pt. Townsend, Washington 1978, 1979


Public Service


Governor's Award for Public Service, Washington State, 1985

Seattle Arts Commission Special Task Force on Media 1977

Seattle Arts Commission Special Task Force on Educational Institutions 1977


Selected Talks


[for repeated public talks, only first instance and venue given]


Neither Supernatural Nor Mechanical, Artists Talk/interview, Whitman College, 2021.

Full Circle: NW School, with Jae Carlsson, Morris Graves Museum of Art, 2016

From Fluxus to Rebar, Artists Talk, Museum of Ventura County, Ventura, California, 2014.

Lecture for solo exhibition at Whatcom County Museum, Bellingham, Washington, 1986

Panel on contemporary painting, Whatcom County Museum, Bellingham, Washington, 1986.

Symposium on Visual Art and Media: Politics and Critique. Seattle Media Library, 1985.

Critics Symposium on Painting, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington, 1985.

Titian to Clemente: Transformations in the Painterly Tradition, Cornish Institute of the Arts, 1984.

The Rebirth of Painting. Public lecture, Seattle Art Museum, 1984.

Transavantguardism: Wolfgang Max Faust vs. Germano Celant, Seattle Public Library, 1984.

The Berlin Wall, Urban Graffiti, and the New Painting, Seattle Pacific University, 1984.

Sources in My Work, public lecture, Cornish Institute for the Arts, Seattle, 1984.

Painting Today, Public lecture, Cornish Institute for the Arts, Seattle, 1984.

Painterly Painting, Again, Public lecture, Seattle Art Museum, 1984.

Late Painting: Picasso, Matisse, de Chirico, Chagall, et alia, Seattle Art Museum, 1983.

Late de Chirico and the Next Italian Generation:, Public lecture, Seattle Central College, 1983.

Teaching Color Theory: Preparing for a Digital World,  Lecture series, Seattle Public Library, 1983.

Teaching Color Theory: Preparing for a Digital World, Lectures, Seattle Central  College, 1983.

The Bauhaus Color Tradition Today: Itten, Klee, Albers, Dahn, ReeL, Seattle Central  College, 1982.

Color Theory: Gerrittsen Schema, Constancies, Color Effects, Seattle Central College, 1981.

Itten was Wrong:: Objective Criterion for Temperature Contrast, Seattle Central College, 1981.

Fluxus Flumoxed, commemorating George Maciunas, Seattle Masonic Hall, 1980.

Color Theory: Preparing Visual Artists for the Computer Age. Seattle Public Library, 1980.

Color Theory Today: Why Classical Mixing Theories Do Not Work, Seattle Public Library, 1980.

Color: Gerrittsen Schema, Digital Representations, Seattle Central College, 1980.

Color : A Comprehensive Conceptual Scheme for Artists, Seattle Public Library, 1980.

Visual Constancies in Color Theory for Artists, Seattle Central College, 1980.

Edwin Land's Impacts on Color Theory: What Artists Should Know, Seattle Central  College, 1980.

Cafe Apocalypse: Performance Art Today, Evergreen State College, 1979.

Performance Art Today: Sources and Contexts, Washington Hall, Seattle, 1979.


Bibliography

Writing About Erik ReeL

Catalogs and Monographs

Kinoshita, Alexis and Moen, Grace, Erik ReeL 20 20, FAFA, 2020

Erik ReeL: Full Circle. Exhibition catalog, Morris Graves Museum of Art, 2016

Carlsson, Jae. Tabula Rasa. Exhibition catalog, 2013

Erik ReeL: From the Private Collection. Catalog. Centaur: 2013

Arconi, Nikki. Erik ReeL Painting Catalog: 1250 -1456. Centaur: 2011

Erik ReeL: Painting: Catalog 1352 – 1401. Centaur: 2010

Erik ReeL: Works on Paper. Centaur: 2009

Erik ReeL: Paintings. Centaur: 2009

Chaos. Exhibition catalog, 2009

Quantum Dynamics of Painting. exhibition catalog, 2008

Erik ReeL: paintings and drawings. 110 plates, Centaur: 2008

Erik ReeL. Face to Face. New World: 2008

17th Annual McNeese National Works on Paper. Exhibition catalog, 2004

17th Parkside National Small Print Exhibition. Exhibition catalog. Wisconsin: 2004


Interviews

Joseph Gallivan, Axios, Art Snacks: Erik ReeL's "Street," February 2024

Ruins of Runes, Erik ReeL text of Sean Riehl video, May 2014

Interview with Erik ReeL, june 2013 Society805.com

Interview with Erik ReeL, January 2013 KAQB


Video

The Visual Language of Erik ReeL, Sean Riehl, 2014, documentary

Epiphany: Erik ReeL and Diane Silver, Eric Minh Swenson, 2017

Objects of Impossibility, Nathan Vonk, 2017, KGTV


Sources

Nathan Vonk, Exciting Work at Museum of Contemporary Art, February 2015

Ruins of Runes, Erik ReeL text of Sean Riehl video, May 2014,

Nelson Jesson, Semiotic Abstraction, November 2013

Christian Reed, Oh, Those Pesky Tag Memes, February 2013

Ben Chinay, Signs of a Lost Civilization, December 2011

Nikki Arconi, Erik ReeL: Markings, catalog essay, November 2011

Erik ReeL 2172, Tutustu kiinnostaviin ideoihin! Pansemia/Asemia sources website


Selected Press

Joseph Gallivan, Axios, Art Snacks: Erik ReeL's "Street," February 2024

Kit Boise-Cossart, Erik ReeL, GraySpace Santa Barbara, November 2018

Leslie Dinaberg, Erik ReeL: Zero Point & Rhonda P. Hill: Blurred Boundaries: Fashion as an Art, September 2018

Erik ReeL at the Butler Institute of American Art, July 2018

Leslie Westbrook, Welcome to Planet ReeL, Ventana Magazin, October 2017

Erik ReeL and Diane Silver, 13 July 2017

Nathan Vonk, Exciting Work at Museum of Contemporary Art, February 2015

Nathan Vonk Review: Out of the Great Wide Open, February 2015

ReeL Grand Slam, November 2014

Society805.com, VAM Improvisational Painting, 7 July 2014

Nash Rightmer & Erik ReeL’s Standing in Boots, May 2014

Nelson Jesson, Semiotic Abstraction, November 2013

Tracy Hudak, A Painter With a View, April 2013

Christian Reed, Oh, Those Pesky Tag Memes, February 2013

Nathan Vonk, How Soon is Now?, June 2012

Ted Mills, In the Abstract Bedroom, June 2012

Ben Chinay, Signs of a Lost Civilization, December 2011

Nicole D’Amore. Faces are Archeteypes, August 2008

Ashley Olive. Erik ReeL at FrameWorks, Otober 2008

Joseph Woodard. Joie de Vivre, 28 August 2004

Charles Donelan. The Riviera American-style, 18 September 2003

Sarah McIver, ReeL Irrational Exuberance, 12 May 2003

Anita Farina, ReeL’s Bagdad Hotel, 17 August 2003

David Jensen, Arte Tropicana and the ReeL Thing, 10 June 2003

Annette Sorel, ReeL Splash of Color, 5 May 2002

Joseph Woodard, Pools and Lines, 2 May 2002

Delores Tarzan, ReeL at Cornish Institute, Seattle Times, 15 October 1984

Regina Hackett, Seattle P-I, 21 January 1981

Barbara Earl Thomas, ReeL Splash of Color, Highline Times, 10 June 1977


Related Articles

Kaya Noteboom, Erik ReeL: The Art of Kenosis, paper, PNCA graduate program,  October 2023

Jae Carlsson, Erik ReeL, Tabula Rasa catalog, April 2013

Raphael Rubinstein, Provisional Painting Part 2: To Rest Lightly on Earth, February 2012

Nikki Arconi, Erik ReeL: Markings, catalog essay, November 2011

Raphael Rubinstein, Provisional Painting, May 2009

Selected Writing by Erik ReeL

Books

Pterodactyl Cries: Art, Abstraction, Apocalypse, 2021


Articles About Visual Art

Matisse in Long Beach, August 2018

Mark Bradford at Hauser & Wirth, May 2018

Yumiko Glover: Pushing the Button 2058 Times, May 2018

Chagall: Fantasies on Stage at LACMA, 13 November 2017

Jimmie Durham: Art at the Center of the World, 11 April 2017

Jean Dubuffet Drawings at the Hammer, 10 April 2017

Moholy-Nagy at LACMA, 31 March 2017

Henry Taylor at Blum & Poe, December 2016

Agnes Martin at LACMA, 21 June 2016

Mara De Luca at Luis de Jesus, 7 June 2016

Letter From the Front, Face to Face, catalog, August 2008

Michael Spafford at the Seattle Art Museum, Vanguard, v. 11, no, 4, May 1982, pp. 34-35


Articles On Theater

Bakersfield Mist, 14 may 2018

Sgt. Pepper at 50; Mark Morris at Eternity, 14 may 2018

Shepard's True West at SPTC

Baby Tangle, 14 may 2018

American Buffalo, 20 april 2018

Macbeth in Ojai, 20 april 2018

Lear, 27 mar 2018

Wrongs of the Righteous, 12 feb 2018

This Random World, 12 feb 2018

Perlmutter’s Directing Hamlet, 12 nov 2017

Taking Sides, 13 nov 2017

Flying H Does Blackbird, 16 oct 2017

Dance: Anaїs by Mixed eMotion Theatrix, 25 sept 2017

Incognito, 22 sept 2017

Becky’s New Car, 6 sept 2017

Steel Magnolias at the Elite, 4 sept 2017

McPherson’s Birds, 1 july 2017

When We Were Young and Unafraid, 9 jun 2017

Milo’s Other Mozart, 5 jun 2017

Beached, 26 april 2017

To Woo is to Win, 25 april 2017

Agnes of God, 6 mar 2017

Devil’s Music that Feeds the Soul, 3 mar 2017

Driving Home: Rubicon Concludes Nibroc Trilogy, 7 feb 2017

Jason Furlani’s Family Trees, 6 dec 2016

Chapter Two at ETC, 5 dec 2016

Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, 17 oct 2016

Night Alive, 24 sept 2016

This Isn’t Kansas, Yet, Is It?, 23 july 2016

Open Meeting Closed, 15 july 2016

Oh, How Lovely Do Angels Fall, 15 jJune 2016

What Kind of Sticks?, 10 june 2016

The Pillowman, 19 may 2016

David Hare’s Skylight, 18 may 2016

Amy Herzog’s 4000 Miles at SPTC, 23 april 2016

Uncanny Valley, 24 mar 2016

Taking Liberty, 7 mar 2016

That Other Place, 16 feb 2016

See Rock City, 2 feb 2016

FUBAR at Flying H, 25 jan 2016

Copenhagen, 16 sept 2015

Acting Rules at Flying H and Elite: Small Engine Repair and Zero Hour, 19 oct 2015

Into the Jaws of History, 13 Sep 2015

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad ... Living Room, 5 Sep 2015

Twisted Trouble, 18 jul 2015

Other Desert Cities, 3 jun 2015

Roger That, 31 may 2015


Regional Art News

Joe Cardella 1945-2018, may 2018

Vonder Gray at WAV, 9 feb 2018

The Art Market 2017, 12 jan 2018

Bob Privett at the Ventura County Museum, 6 june 2017

Assembling Assemblage, 17 may 2017

Museum Mishandles Asian Pacific Exhibition, 27 jun 2016

A World Down the Street, 24 may 2016

Flying H Theatre Announces New Plays, 15 feb 2016

New Executive Director for the Museum of Ventura County, 18 april 2013

Pistol Productions: Firing Away, 1 oct 2012

Is the 805 Ready for a Regional Arts Council?, 9 feb 2012

Putting It All Together: Tracy Hudak, 3 feb 2012

Arts Candidates Sweep Ventura City Council Elections, 18 nov 2011

Irving Foundation Grants for the 805, 28 oct 2011

Ventura Wins National Arts Destination Award, 25 jul 2011

Other Publications

In the late 1970s and early 1980s ReeL wrote on art and performance for a variety of publications including Vanguard, ArtExpress, High Performance art magazines, Artweek, and/or Notes, weekly reviews and a weekly column on the arts for the daily newspaper in east Seattle, the Bellevue Journal-American, was arts editor and writer for the Seattle Voice monthly glossy city magazine, and collaborated with art critic Jae Carlsson [ArtDish, ArtForum, ArtsWatch] on a number of zines on language and critical theory in the pre-internet era. None of this writing, except a review of Michael Spafford in Vanguard is listed above. ReeL is currently an occasional contributor to Oregon ArtsWatch and various international platforms.


About Erik ReeL

"ReeL's technique exhibits a high degree of transparency, layering, sfgraffito and graffitto, with a strong sense of hand, the hand-made, and an absence of any references to the material world. This work can be seen as a thorough-going critique of materialism, the machine or machine-made, and the triumph of feeling over the manufactured. For ReeL, marking is a defining characteristic of the human and the primordial act of signification and meaning for human consciousness." – Nikki Arconi, 2010


ReeL contends that with the rise of graphically interfaced computers and the ever-increasing involvement of more and more humans with screens in their daily lives, the cognitive processing of two dimensional surfaces is central to civilized human experience and thus a focus of his visual art. Further, central to ReeL's work is an exploration of human marking on a surface, since for ReeL, “marking is a defining characteristic of the human and the primordial act of signification and meaning for human consciousness.”


Born in Seattle in 1952, Erik ReeL attended Whitman College majoring in mathematics, the University of California, at Berkeley, and the University of Washington majoring in art history and studio art, graduating summa cum laude in 1975. ReeL studied art history with Rainer Crone, painting with Jacob Lawrence, Michael Spafford, Bob Jones, and Michael Dailey, color with Richard Dahn [a student of Albers at Yale], sumi-e with George Tsutakawa, and, independently, Chinese brush with Hsai Chen.


In the late 1970s Reel wrote for Vanguard, ArtExpress, and High Performance art magazines, Artweek, and/or Notes, did weekly reviews and a column for the Bellevue Journal-America daily newspaper, and was the arts editor for the Seattle Voice city magazine. During this time he sat on two Seattle Arts Commission Special Task Forces: Media and Educational Institutions for the Arts. Reel was involved in performance art as well as writing and painting, performing in pieces at the Seattle Art Museum, Cornish School for Allied Arts, Washington Hall, Poetry Seattle, Salon Apocalypse, and several art galleries, usually collaborating with musicians and dancers, while exhibiting regularly with the original Jackson Street Gallery located upstairs at 123 Jackson Street. ReeL taught art history, color theory, and life drawing for five years at what is now Seattle Central College.


Leaving Seattle in 1984, ReeL essentially dropped out of society for a decade, for the most part not exhibiting or publishing during this time with the notable exception of a solo show of drawing at Seattle's Mazey Hickey Gallery in 1987.


ReeL’s painting has alternated between phases of figurative and abstract imagery, for the most part ignoring the distinction between drawing and painting. In 2009 ReeL stripped all references to the material world from his work as a critique of the hyper-materialism that he felt pervades contemporary society. In a presentation at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, Portland-based art critic, Jae Carlsson [Art Dish, ArtForum] pointed out ReeL’s visual and philosophical connections to earlier Pacific Northwest painters such as Morris Graves and Mark Tobey [ReeL also studied sumi-e under George Tsutakawa and knew Kenneth Callahan], while at the same time indicating that ReeL had pushed his work beyond any Postmodernist regime.


In 2017, the following statement was published by a California gallery regarding ReeL’s work:


"Like an archaeologist uncovering the remnants of written language ReeL creates meaning from, not just what is visible, but in what has been obscured. To understand ReeL’s work one must look at his attraction to such seemingly incongruent influences as erased whiteboards, blizzards, improvisational music, and abandoned industrial sites. His work celebrates the meaning in remnants, the hidden, the random and destroyed."


In 2019 ReeL returned to the Pacific Northwest, relocating to Portland, Oregon, where he currently maintains his studio and lives with his wife, Rhonda P. Hill. 


In Portland ReeL initiated a series of three exhibitions designed to reintroduce his work to the Pacific Northwest: [1] an exhibition at PLACE in Portland in 2023 showing transitional work completed during the COVID pandemic and lockdown; [2] as a guest exhibitor at the Laura Vincent Gallery in Portland in 2024 a survey of work completed in the decade prior to arriving in Portland [2009-2019] of pre-Pandemic work, and [3] an exhibition in the Spring semester of 2025 at Whitman College in Washington showing current work along with an exhibition curated by Rhonda P. Hill, his wife.


ReeL's art is collected on five continents and represented in private collections based in Buenos Aires, Berlin, Chicago, Dubai, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Houston, Indianapolis, London, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York City, Oakland, Paris, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Santa Fe [NM], Seattle, and Seoul. Public collections include the permanent collections of the Morris Graves Museum of Art, Seattle City Light, City of Seattle, Czong Institute of Contemporary Art, Museum of Ventura County, and Whitman College.


Artist's Statement

My work has followed a life-long pattern of exploring aspects of how human consciousness processes visual stimuli, or what is often called cognitive processing, especially when involving two-dimensional information. Early on, this was based on a study of color theory, visual ambiguities, and the visual constancies involved in how the human brain processes information on a two-dimensional surface. It is my contention that with the rise of graphically interfaced personal computers and the ever-increasing involvement of more and more humans with flat screens in their daily lives, that an understanding and deeper awareness of how two-dimensional cognitive processing operates and works is central to civilized human experience and should be a focus of my visual art. Further, my work is intimately bound up with an exploration of human marking on a surface, without machine or mechanical assistance; I feel such marking is a defining characteristic of the human and the primordial act of signification and meaning for human consciousness.


My work has been influenced by micro- and nano-photography, poorly erased whiteboards, sidewalks, ruins, abandoned industrial sites, ancient stone surfaces, fire, sand, sea and ice, charcoal, hieroglyphs, esoteric texts, Hubble Ultra-Deep Field photographs, foundries, wars, concrete, pubic hair, cytoplasm, craters, wood, photographs of things we cannot see with the naked eye in real time, paintings, railroad box-car markings, Skandinavian runes, blizzards, scratched surfaces, improvisational music, typography, the human voice, the night sky, the inside of an eyeball, the surface of other planets, scars, deserts, scorched earth, and the accidental, which is not really indeterminate, but the result of subtler action on a deeper plane of consciousness.


I have been particularly inspired by improvisational music: Vijay Ayer, Miles Davis, Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Theolonus Monk, Dewey Redman, Flamenco, Jamaican Freestyle, Imrat Khan and the improvisational traditions of the Indian subcontinent.


As for early influences, growing up in Seattle my visual starting point for painting was Mark Tobey’s White Writing paintings. Other influences included Pacific Northwest Scandinavian textile, architectural, and design traditions, which tend to be highly abstract. Later, it was Klee and Miro: In terms of color theory there is a direct lineage from Itten and Klee to Albers to Dahn to myself. At university, influences also came from Michael Spafford and the Black Mountain school via Jacob Lawrence and Robert Jones, then slightly later, Cy Twombly via his exhibitions in the 1970s.


I have found my researches into human mark making capable of sensitizing people to the subtleties of their own internal cognitive processing in ways that are not easy to verbalize, but are clearly perceived by those who look sufficiently long enough to fully experience the paintings directly. This is a process bound by specific cognitive constraints that take a certain amount of time. A glance is insufficient.


Erik ReeL


Photo credits:

photo 1: Erik ReeL in his studio with collector, sociologist, documentary filmmaker, and feminist scholar, France Winddance Twine, 2018. Photo: Rhonda P. Hill.


photo 2: Independent curator Kathy Rae Huffman and Erik ReeL, Villa Aurora Library, Santa Monica, California, 2014, photo: Rhonda P. Hill


photo 3: Erik ReeL at Front Street Studio, Ventura, California Studio, 2016, photo: Skye Bennike


photo 4: Laurie Kirby and Boom Duo [John Lacques and Noah Thomas] at ReeL's Front Street Studio, 2015, photo: Rhonda P. Hill


photo 5: Erik ReeL, Portland, Oregon, 2020, photo: Erik ReeL. 

This photo is a public commons photo, available to use without permission in conjunction with any publication regarding Erik ReeL or his art, consistent with fair use under USA copyright law.