Eric Lerner

About the Artist

Eric K. Lerner is a self-taught artist. In the mid-1990’s he began creating votive pieces employing mixed media, acrylic, and digital manipulation. Soon, he began working as a graphic designer and illustrator. His clients included the BBC, Science Magazine, IBM, Marriott Corporation and Right Hemisphere. He also produced posters, t-shirts and publications for a number of AIDS service providers and advocacy organizations, including: AIDS Research Information Center, Health Education Resource Organization, Maryland State Health Department, ACTUP, and the American Indian Center. By 2004, he stopped working in digital media almost entirely to focus on illustration work using traditional techniques. He studied Buddhist thangka painting. By 2008, he realized that most of the works that initially inspired him to pursue the visual arts were old etchings, engravings and woodcuts. He sought a formal education in printmaking that continues through the present. As a fine artist, Lerner has exhibited and sold work in the United States, the U.K., Australia and Italy. His 2012 release of a hand-crafted major arcana tarot, Radiant Spleen Tarot, appeared to favorable reviews and sold out. He has work included in the permanent collection of the Museo dei Tarocchi in Bologna. In 2017, he contributed 5 pieces to 1917 Tarot, commemorating the Russian Revolution, an international collaborative exhibition/publication that premiered in St. Petersburgh Russia on October 22, 2017. In 2018, the exhibition traveled to Madrid, Spain.

Artist's Statement

A lot of my work explores the phenomenology of myth-making through portrayals of gods, esoterica and sub-culture. In these phenomena, individuals and archetypes enter a universal lexicon through the breakdown of liminal boundaries. The demarcation between what Western culture defines as physical and spiritual realms blur. Objectively I don't buy into such dualism. However, the triggers for such perceptual shifts can be triggered by sex, violence, outlandish behavior or tragedy. I don’t view these as sensational elements. Rather they are phenomena that depart from ordinary routine. The purpose of depicting them is to cause the viewer to examine the subject’s circumstance from a different perspective and thus intuit a point where boundaries between exoteric and esoteric reflect one another. Even though I operate often from a specific religious or narrative focus, I do not like explaining what is going on in a given image. I’d rather the viewer explore the image from his or her own perspective.