Artist Statement:

Always a happy beachcomber from childhood on, for the last fifteen years or so my work has been based on objects I find on the beach. So my subject matter not only spiritually focuses on nature, but nature is its actual base. 

Sometimes, these assemblages stand on their own to be glued and hung on a wall, but more often they serve solely as models for my paintings. Besides the collecting, what interests me is the objects’ three dimensionality versus the panels’ flatness; the transformation on the canvases from small to large; and the assemblages’ juxtaposition of wishful contained order with the chaos of the surrounding space or cosmos.

Laying out the objects on the panels usually without conscious intention often ends up offering surprising insights as to how I am feeling that day and why. The paintings also offer surprises but more reflected upon, trial-by-error ones. The heavy black outlines, placement, shapes, layers, color, texture, composition, and marks encompass a more complicated abstract reach, a more complicated, longer term distillation of personal experience and/or mood.

 The square or rectangular shapes of the panels may be a nod to traditional windows looking out or in or to traditional art hanging on a wall. The floating in space might be in part the influence of two islands: Great Inagua in the Bahamas where I spent my early childhood and an intergenerational island in Maine where I still beach comb. 

Changing Seasons, Safe Travels, completed at the end of 2024 and slightly revised in 2025, began a slight shift in direction. The assemblages still float in space, but discarded shapes are more visible underneath the surface. These muted mistakes now contribute more prominently to the finished whole. The palette, with some exceptions, focuses more on blacks, whites, and low-key colors. The black outlines are more informal and varied. Overall, there is more informality and looseness, more linear depiction and fewer solid masses. These paintings and some assemblages will be on exhibit in The Mills Gallery’s Project Room from April 26 to July 19.

Bio:

Aileen Erickson is an artist who currently works in painting and assemblage. Natural elements present in her 3D work often inspire her paintings. Her art focuses on subjective images of nature which reflect personal mood and experience. Mostly due to developing physical sensitivities, she has moved from printmaking to paper to acrylic to oil. This necessity to start over with each move has resulted in a certain freshness of approach. Erickson attended The Skowhegan School of Painting and The Art Students League in New York. In Boston, she is an active member of the local artistic community, having been part of The Experimental Etching Studio for six years and having a studio at The Boston Center for the Arts for over fifty years. She has exhibited her work at Brandeis University’s Dreiser Gallery, Boston City Hall, Wheaton College’s Beard and Weil Art Galleries, Brickbottom Gallery, Mills Gallery, and most recently The Bromfield Gallery.

Aileen comes from a family of art lovers, especially her mother. She is married to an artist, and they live together in Cambridge, MA where they raised a daughter and two dogs sequentially.

CV:

Studio: #416, BCA Center for the Arts, 551 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02116

Email: pittori@gmail.com
Art Education:

1963-4 State University of Iowa (Printmakers Workshop under Lasanky; also The Writers’ Workshop)
1967 BA Sarah Lawrence College (one third studio art)  

1966 Skowhegan School of Painting

1967-69 The Arts Students League, NYC  after being accepted at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY which was briefly attended

PRINTS:
1972 Boston City Hall, Main Gallery, Experimental Etching Studio
1972 “The Boston Printmakers at the Rose Art Museum,” Waltham, MA
1973 The Opening Exhibition of the Arts and Science Center, Nashua, NH
1975 “Elexander Knevvsen and Aileen Erickson” at the Boston Center for the Arts Gallery (later The Mills Gallery) 

1976 “Fifteen Printmakers from the Experimental Etching Studio,” 6 aquatint-with-line prints, Dreitzer Gallery, Brandeis University, Waltham  

INK/CHARCOAL/WATERCOLOR/GOUACHE ON PAPER, ACRYLIC STILL LIFE ON CANVAS:
1982 Solo exhibition: “Aileen Erickson at the Mills Gallery”
Group shows with the Boston Center for the Arts including:
1979 Main Gallery, Boston City Hall 

1980 “The Mood of New England, Past and Present” The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

1982 “Boston Center at the Boston Five” The Boston Five Cent Savings Bank

Other group shows including:

1982 “Watercolors, the Medium Explored,” 3 works, Van Buren/Brazelton/Cutting Gallery
1983 “Sixty Boston Artists,” Main Gallery, Boston City Hall 

1982 “Boston Within” Curator David Ross (ICA), 2 works, Cyclorama Hall 

1988 Solo exhibition: “Watercolor, Gouache, Acrylic Still Life Paintings 1982-8” Mills Gallery  

1984,1985,1986 Mills Gallery BCA Annual Group show
2003-4 Dec-Feb “The Perceived Object: Directions in Contemporary Still Life” 5 paintings, Beard and Weil Art Galleries,Wheaton College 

2007 “Studios@35” Curator James Manning, 2 works, Mills Gallery
2008 Art and Author Exhibition, 45th Reunion,16 works, Concord Academy Math and Arts Center
2011 “Off the Wall” Curator Susan L. Stoops, 1 painting, Danforth Art Museum 

PAINTINGS ON PAPER, ACRYLIC ON LARGER CANVASES, BEACH OBJECTS ON PAPER AND ON PANELS:

2009-2010 “Amalgam” Curator Evan Garza, Artist Studio Building (ASB) Annual Exhibit, 2 works, Mills Gallery 

2010 “Objects Falling into Place/Space” Solo exhibit: South End Branch of the Boston Public Library
2011 “This Must be the Place” Curator Emily Isenberg, 5 works, ASB Annual Exhibit, Mills Gallery 

2011 “Into the Light” Curator Fay Chandler, 2 works, The Chandler Gallery (formerly Maud Morgan Gallery)
2013-14 Dec-Feb “The Infinite Space of the Possible” Curator Lynne Cooney, 15 works, ASB Annual Exhibit, Mills Gallery (‘This Land is a small land’ The Boston Globe, Dec. 31, 2013 ‘Small canvases and infinite space’ plus www.youtube.com/watch? V=13LyNAOHWME) 

2014-15 Dec-Jan “The Triggering Town, Details of Subtle Significance” Curators Randi Hopkins and Zelana Davis, 4 works, ASB Annual Exhibit, Mills Gallery 

2015-2016 Dec-Jan “Dream Weavers” Curator Debra Olin, one large acrylic on canvas, Brickbottom Gallery, sponsored by The Art Connection

2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 ASB Group Exhibits, Mills Gallery, BCA Lobby Gallery  

2017 July-Sept “Real/Ideal, Turning Utopia into Reality” Curator David Guerra, large acrylic on canvas, ASB Annual Exhibit, Mills Gallery 

Except for 1998, 2006, 2021, South End Open Studios

OIL ON LARGER CANVASES, BEACH OBJECTS ON PANELS (ASSEMBLAGES)

2016 July-Sept “Placemaking Objects: BCA Artist Studios Exhibition” Curator Jennifer Hall, one objects-on-panel work, ASB Annual Exhibit, Mills Gallery

2018 One Person Exhibit, curator Randi Hopkins, BCA Lobby Gallery

2022 November Two Person Exhibit (Barbieri/Erickson) paintings and assemblages, The Tavern Club, Boston

2024 Bromfield Gallery, Plus One exhibition, 36x36” acrylic/oil on canvas, guest of Bromfield Gallery member Patty Stone

2024 Piano Craft Gallery, Fire in the Basement, 3 framed black ink and watercolor paintings on paper, BCA exhibit, managed by BCA resident Rebecca Greene

2022-2025 Boston Center for the Arts Studio Residency program

2025 April 26-July 19 curator Julia Szejnblum, assistant curator Casey Fisher, The Mills’ Gallery’s Project Room,