Eric Gold
Each face holds a story.
My portrait work explores shared consciousness and community through a process that transforms small photographic fragments into large-scale figurative paintings. By working in abstraction and assembling many individually painted segments, I’m able to juxtapose styles, colour interpretations, and levels of detail, creating tension, movement, and a sense of collective presence. This approach also opens the work to public participation, continually informing and evolving my personal practice.
From Here (2018-2019) is a time capsule of a small New England community: everyday faces in a historic town at a time of transformation. Each face holds a story that is unique, local and also universal. Established in 1623, Kittery Point was until recently home to Frisbee’s, the oldest family-run market in the United States. The shuttering of the market marks a time of change in a town where families have lived for 14 generations.
A bee can recognize an individual human face.
So a bee can recognize you but can you recognize a bee?
In 2013, as a response the honeybee crisis, Gold painted a series of bee portraits. Enlarging and painting a group of macro photography images allows the observer a rare opportunity to stare into a face that is rarely seen and critical to our environment and human life.
Can a shared experience lead to
an evolution in consciousness?
One Hundred Monkeys is a series of paintings based on the "100th Monkey Theory of Shared Consciousness", a concept from a 1950’s research project in Japan. Scientists at the time found the breaking point for shared consciousness among a community of island-bound Macaque monkeys.
Gold’s portrait series began in 2007 with a series of paintings of 100 Monkey Faces. He then experimented with painting deconstructed portraits and, in 2010, travelled to Koshima Island in southern Japan to meet and photograph Macaque monkeys, descendants of the original 1950’s study.
The 100 Monkey's collection was Exhibited at the Vintage Conservatory in Toronto in 2012
Eric Gold’s Steiff #3 painting was a winning finalist in the 2011 Courvoisier Collective competition and exhibited at Gallery 1313 in Toronto.
Other Work
