Artist Statement/Biography

Born in 1965, Eric Galbreath was raised in the lush green suburbs of northern New Jersey. He graduated The Art Institute of Pittsburgh while designing and art directing in an advertising agency. After receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Visual Art and Design from Point Park College, Eric returned east to pursue theological studies. Master of Divinity in hand, Eric accepted an administrative position at the seminary, continuing to design on a freelance basis.

In 1997 Eric relocated to Tucson. The wide open sky and saturated colors of the American Southwest captivated Eric’s spirit. Designing full time from his home office, Eric began painting abstract paintings as a way to detach from the flat, artificially perfect world inside the computer. Using his hands to manipulate real materials on canvas was just the needed catalyst for an explosion of light, color, and delectable finishes and textures.

“I think the energy of life is a kind of random chaos,” Galbreath says. “Each of us makes some semblance of meaning out of this raw material, attempting to impose order, rearranging, moving, and combining ideas, events, people. We repeat, correct, and change the past. We explore, affect, and move the present, overlaying what has come before.”

“Rather than my dictating what a painting is ‘supposed’ to be, I’d rather the viewer be aware of what is occurring internally, what she or he brings to the piece,” says Galbreath. “Much of my work is intentionally non-objective, allowing the random, incorporating the chaotic. I think the viewer connects with my work on a pre-cognitive, nonverbal basis. I challenge the viewer to hold closure at bay and appreciate being in the moment with that ambiguous connection.”