Eric Cruikshank

Open Light is an exhibition of new and recent paintings by Inverness born painters Eric Cruikshank and James Lumsden. Both artists share an interest in the creation of a sense of light, space and depth emanating from within their work, which although influenced by minimal, abstract, and reductive painting, is rooted in landscape and a sense of place. The exhibition will be on view from April 6th to May 27th, 2024.

Inverness Museum and Art Gallery is a museum and gallery on Castle Wynd in Inverness in the Highlands of Scotland. Admission is free. The collection and facilities are managed by High Life Highland on behalf of Highland Council...

Holly Johnson Gallery is pleased to present Eric Cruikshank’s exhibition, An Echo, representing a selection of recent works on paper. An opening reception will be held Saturday, March 30th, from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. This is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, and it will continue through June 15, 2024...

Holly Johnson Gallery in Dallas is pleased to announce the opening of In Sequence, an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by artists working in a serial format. An open house will be held on Saturday, August 28th, from 4:00 to 8:00 pm. The exhibition continues through Saturday, November 13.

In Sequence showcases artists including Anna Bogatin Ott, Rebecca Carter, Eric Cruikshank, Geoff Hippenstiel, Dion Johnson, Lester Monzon, Jill Moser, Jackie Tileston, and Joan Winter. The selections reveal the artists wide range of creative approaches in conceiving and producing works in a series...

Holly Johnson Gallery is pleased to present Eric Cruikshank’s exhibition, THE SKIES WINDOW, representing a selection of fifteen oil on paper and canvas paintings created during the past year. An open house will be held Saturday, February 20th, from 11:00 to 5:00 p.m. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, and it will continue through May 8, 2021...

Holly Johnson Gallery is pleased to present Eric Cruikshank’s exhibition, PAPER SKIES, representing a selection of twelve, intimately scaled oil on paper paintings created during the past year. An opening reception will be held Saturday, June 30^th, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and it will continue through September 29.

The Scottish artist Eric Cruikshank is a modern painter. Born in a country and into a culture with a strong narrative tradition, his work departs from customary figuration, yet revels in the craft and artisanship of his chosen medium. While this embrace of non-figurative abstraction is thoroughly modern, Eric Cruikshank's devotion to his craft is conservative in the best sense...

SF: Your solo show Clear Light Day – Soft Dark Night at Das Esszimmer with new works from this year, 2017, feels very familiar to me, like something one knows already for a long time – on a first glance. Rothko comes to my mind, though your work is rather distinct and just lately some of your colour gradients reminded me on paintings by Turner I had seen ages ago in London. Is it only me or do other people react similar to your works in terms of familiarity?

EC: Rarely, as viewers respond and interact with the works in such different ways, but I really like it when it does. For me, familiarity makes me feel comfortable, and I look at things differently when I feel comfortable, especially if this comfort can grow and combine with an excitement with what I’m looking at. Not always an easy combination with the nature of my work, as it takes time, so it feels good when people give it time - even more so when this happens early on...

ABSTRACT COLOURIST ARTIST, ERIC CRUIKSHANK, TALKS TO REDBIRD ABOUT THE COMPLEXITY OF SIMPLICITY IN ABSTRACT ART.

Eric Cruikshank's paintings have a huge amount of thought and process behind them. The process Eric uses to produce the finished pieces with their perfect colour gradients, is quite zen like. His painting technique is like an active meditation, concentrating on the look and feel of the medium, taking hours and hours of careful mixing and layering to achieve the flawless result. We really enjoyed learning more about him...

Squares and rectangles, mapped out in colour upon a wall, created by a person unseen: the building blocks of what we perceive on the most basic level, as creative communication. Entering into the exchange with Craik and Cruikshank we engage in a process of un-doing, where fleeting impressions are deceptive. Adding and subtracting multiple delicate layers of pigmented glaze, the artists work their subtle alchemy on the boundaries of the picture plane; within the considered act of painting and un-painting a myth of flatness and opacity is simultaneously cast and deconstructed. The spectator's eye roams, resting a while on the edges of the support (a whispered background reference in our search for origin). Taking a visual leap, we perceive this precipice before willingly escaping the constraints of geometry...

The work of Eric Cruikshank and Ian Kane demands quiet contemplation: the stillness of the pieces invites a reception which is responsive to their respective sensibilities. Their scale is modest, the colouration intense yet restrained: these works are silently beautiful. But how might such modest works hint at the sublime? One answer to this question is in their reading, the notion that the work is more than what it is; the work offers a space of encounter which, by its very nature, is a space of difference. This way to the sublime does not take its lead from traditional notions of what we might call the Romantic sublime, but from careful thought about how the reading of these works opens difference: in short their writerly possibilities...

The Scottish artist Eric Cruikshank is a modern painter. Born in a country and into a culture with a strong narrative tradition, his work departs from customary figuration, yet revels in the craft and artisanship of his chosen medium. Instead of portraying famous men, it analyses the qualities of colour and light. Instead of imitating landscapes, it explores notions of painterly space. And instead of illustrating stories, it investigates the process of painting itself. More than anything, this approach relies on the individual viewer. Our perceptions of colour, light and space are not only dependent on the painting - they are just as much dependent on the conditions in which we perceive it. Changes in lighting, spatial arrangement, distance to the object, subjective mood of the beholder and even the time spent with the artwork, become constituting factors in understanding it. Instead of a mere consumer of a pre-packaged story, the beholder becomes participant observer...