We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Erica Huntzinger. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Erica below.

Erica, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I see risk taking as imperative not only for life choices but for the act of making. Play is one of the most important aspects of life that accompanies & can accelerate the development of risk taking regardless of outcome. Failure can be fun & accidents oftentimes lead to incredibly interesting results to reflect & build on. So, I use this as a template in my life & artistic practice. I fail & am wrong a lot. It is part of who I am becoming because growing & learning is painful why not risk while being playful. I risk all the time from small to large things. The last big risk I took was speaking up when it was the unpopular voice in the room. I heard myself and that had to be enough because my opinion wasn’t shared by others there. I have to take that courage & drop it back into my body to keep on creating, keeping on keeping on for myself both as a person & for my craft.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I consider myself a painter. I may use a variety of materials but ultimately I’m making something for people to hang on their walls in their home or business to allow for visual respite & hopeful meditations. I enjoy creating large scale pieces that house color & form that can stimulate & allow for space to get lost within. I think of my work as internal landscapes. It’s a process much like making tea: feelings & thoughts mingle with the season, relationships & experience. It steeps and comes out through many different tools & layers of paint, I sometimes feel as if I’ve turned my insides out painted with them & then have to reintegrate. Because of this abstracted intuitive work, they can sometimes be profoundly bright or deeply dark or glowing with optimism. My largest piece to date was 8’x26’ titled Our Seas & speaks to the vastness, beauty & mystery within each of us & in the oceans that connect our world. I love communicating with clients about commissions;; asking odd questions that I use to create the base and discover the work. l love to actively be a part of creating paintings in the context to its new space/home. Spaces in which my paintings are going to live are an exciting challenge. I have a large shared studio & am able to work on multiple projects at once, “finding” the pieces as I go. I also am the host to the podcast In The Act featuring people talking about creative acts in their lives. I am passionate about a number of things but assisting people as they think about creative options in their lives & creating work that has abstracted expressions for people to travel into & derive their own meaning from are 2 of my absolute favorite things.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Well, this was more challenging earlier in my art career as I found it difficult & upsetting that my work was questioned as art. As an abstract artist, I’ve fielded hundreds of questions by people who still question the validity of abstraction even though non-objective art & abstraction has been with us for well over a hundred years. My interpretation now is that people want to “know” & feel like they are “correct” in their opinions & when it isn’t handed to them as a recognizable form then people might be opposed to it. I’ve found that providing a small roadmap for people to use to enter into the viewing space helps tremendously which is why I title my paintings. I also try not to take offense to questions that arise from the viewer & ask questions back to them so that we’re co-creating answers thereby getting to a new place together. It’s not easy but it’ can be rewarding. Just make sure you have enough critical thoughtful conversations about your work to balance your vulnerability with challenging your art choices.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I have a number of books that have added to the collection of thoughts that are imbued into my life & work. I’d say early on the important books near me were The Little Engine That Could, Amanda Dreaming & Burt Dow, Deep Water Man. Excellent reads & images for any age. Today a few of my favorites have been Creative Quest by Questlove (audiobook recommended) Stephen King’s On Writing, The Artificial Kingdom: a treasury of the Kitch experience by Olalquiaga, Sparks of Genius: the 13 thinking tools of the worlds most creative people by Root-Bernstein, What is Art For by Dissanayake, Creativity by Csikszentmihalyi, What Painting Is by Elkins, & A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. These reads have been incredibly written & impactful in how I view myself, my work, the process of making & viewing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ericahuntzinger.com
• Instagram: https://Instagram.com/ericahuntzinger
• Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Op_FUksGs3w
• Other: In The Act podcast
  

  https://www.authenticobsessions.com/episodes/

Image Credits

Cooper Diers