PROJECT STATEMENT

In September 2022, painter Kerry Vaughn Erickson spent a month in Paris. It was his third visit, but it had been years since he had been there. His first two experiences were short – just a few days the first time, and a week the second. This trip was a much deeper dive into the city that inspired so many of his art heroes.

As luck would have it, his AirBnB reservation fell through last minute, and he found himself scrambling to find new accommodation two days before he was meant to leave. Luckily, he found an apartment – waaaaaay outside the city. His new temporary home was called Bondy – a graffiti covered, family-oriented, real working suburb, devoid of any major tourist attractions. His experiences in Bondy, combined with visits to galleries and museums of all kinds, inform this new body of work entitled “Visiteur”.

In this series of paintings, which in some ways he considers “field notes”, Erickson presents his personal visual interpretations of a city that is at once dirty and decayed, but also undeniably elegant and inspiring.

ARTIST BIO

​Kerry Vaughn Erickson (b. 1971) is a painter and art instructor who currently lives and works in Vancouver BC. Early in his career, Kerry worked as a draughtsman, a graphic designer, an illustrator and an art director. It was these experiences in the commercial art world as well as a love for the old masters that influences his work – an amalgamation of traditional and contemporary methods and aesthetics. Kerry began teaching in Ottawa in 2002 and has since continued teaching at various schools and art institutions across the country.