Eric Hall, 915 Spring Garden Studio Visit
Eric Hall has maintained a studio at 915 Spring Garden for more than two years, he used to work at home but desired to create large scale paintings. The high ceilinged bright studio permits the painter to go big, there’s a triptych of bridges that’s enormous. Eric Hall has figured out the largest canvas he can fit through the door – 9 feet high and ten feet wide. DoN commented that that’s a lot of paint? “Yeah, I just need a big idea.” Eric Hall‘s current fascination is a series of paintings based on a glass pyramid. The Spiker, Jeff the photographer and DoN were all impressed by the bold color fields, a visual feast for the eyes during our open studio art crawl.
Referring to the canvas on his easel Eric said, “This is acrylic and oil pastels. Did you know oil pastels were originated for Pablo Picasso? He said he wanted something which would give it color and the ability to draw. So he went to Sennelier 
Eric Hall, 915 Spring Garden Studio Visit
Eric Hall explained that oil pastels are highly susceptible to damage, “Oil pastels have to be covers with glass. But Sennelier has come up with this spray so it’s more like oil paint when it dries. It surprised me because it was only like 1923, I thought it was a much older medium than that. It was about the time Claude Monet was working, his garden was well established, that’s about the time he had his cataract operation.”
Eric Hall, 915 Spring Garden Studio Visit
Eric Hall, 915 Spring Garden Studio Visit
Eric Hall‘s glass pyramid paintings are based on a gift which he found beautiful and inspiring, he has created a series of almost Warholized paintings of the object, creating a sense of celebrity. The studio is filled with large crystal images in glowing color, like Jim Dine‘s bathrobe paintings, Eric Hall‘s crystal pyramids evoke emotions like love, desire and hope. Another large painting glowing in the sunny studio made DoN think of Gerhard Richter, the canvas could have been large quantities of paint squeegeed across the canvas but it’s actually a huge landscape of canyons lit with bright colors of shadow and light. Eric Hall has big ideas.
Read about 915 Spring Garden Art Studios artiss:
DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog
Written and photographed by DoN Brewer
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