At the Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles, on Saturday, March 7, 2020, “Machine Man Memories” is its next major solo show with San Francisco-based award-winning artist/illustrator Eric Joyner.
This exhibition is artist Joyner’s newest series of fantastical paintings of Robots and Donuts fame. His work depicts the tenuous conflict between children’s toys and adulthood as a portrait of another reality. In addition, his work has also been characterized by his playful and surrealistic style that creates harmony between the mix of cartoon characters, especially Japanese tin robots and colorful donuts inserted in all kinds of landscapes from the Age of Dinosaurs to the bottom of the ocean.
Consisting of 18 oil paintings, the artist says, “The first paintings were inspired by people I met, some locally and some from new friends in China. I later found inspiration in American illustrators such as N.C. Wyeth, Michael Whelan and the brothers Hildebrandt as well as fine artists Grant Wood and David Hockney. I was distracted by the 1953 movie War of the Worlds and one night I dreamt a white cat came to me and whispered in my ear to paint snowmen. As fate would have it, my friend Lou Lima brought me some snowmen figures to paint. The rest, as they say, is history.”
For more detailed information, including other artist’s works on view, see: www.coreyhelfordgallery.com.
About
Born in San Mateo, California, Eric Joyner’s childhood was filled with reading comics (mostly Mad, Creepy, Eerie and newspaper comic strips), playing sports and going to school, as well as drawing and painting. He began to take painting lessons after being inspired by a visit to the De Young’s Van Gogh exhibit in San Francisco. Joyner went on to attend the Academy of Art and the University of San Francisco, establishing himself as a commercial artist, creating illustrations for Mattel Toys, Levi’s, Microsoft and Showtime. A member of San Francisco Society of Illustrators and New York Society of Illustrators, Joyner has been an instructor and speaker at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University and California College of the Arts. His work has been featured in San Jose Museum of Art’s exhibition “Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon”, and he has shown in numerous galleries and cultural institutions worldwide. https://ericjoyner.com/about-eric-joyner
Corey Helford Gallery was first established in 2006 by Jan Corey Helford and her husband, television producer and creator, Bruce Helford (The Conners, Anger Management, The Drew Carey Show, George Lopez) and has since evolved into one of the premier galleries of New Contemporary art. Its goals as an institution are the support and growth of young and emerging, to well-known and internationally established artists. CHG represents a diverse collection of international artists, primarily influenced by today’s pop culture and collectively encompassing style genres such as New Figurative Art, Pop Surrealism, Neo Pop, Graffiti and Street Art. CHG is located in Downtown Los Angeles in a robust 12,000 square foot building presenting new exhibitions approximately every six weeks.