Born 1952 in Seattle
Based in Portland, Oregon

Education

1980-82  University of Washington, graduate study in art history, criticism

1976        London, Paris, independent study, private grant

1975        BA summa cum laude, University of Washington, Seattle
1974        University of California, Berkeley
1971-73   Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington 

Selected Solo and Two-Person Shows

Sheehan Gallery, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington 2025 [upcoming]

What is so lovely about the end of the world?  PLACE, Portland, Oregon 2023

Erik ReeL : Zero Point, GraySpace Gallery, Santa Barbara, California 2018

Epiphany, Erik ReeL with Diane Silver, Porch Gallery, Ojai, California 2017

Erik ReeL : Full Circle, Morris Graves Museum of Art, Eureka, California (catalog) 2016

Silence, SCIART, Camarillo, California 2014

Standing in Boots, Erik ReeL with Nash Rightmer, WAV Projects, Ventura 2014

Rebar at the Tool Room, Museum of Ventura County, Ventura, California 2014

Tabula Rasa, 643 Project Space, Ventura, California 2013

60 @ 60, Ventura, California 2012

Markings, B Street Project Space, Oxnard, California 2011

Signs of a Lost Civilization, Vita Arts Center, Bell Arts Factory, Ventura, California 2011

Viva la Vida, Laurel Ventura Gallery, Ventura, California 2009

Turbulence, Erik ReeL with Vonder Gray, Galerie 251, Ventura, California 2009

Caruso Woods Gallery, Santa Barbara 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008

Santa Barbara Visitors Bureau and Film Commission, California 2003

UCSB Faculty Club, Santa Barbara 2001, 2003, 2008

Delphine Gallery, Santa Barbara 2000, 2001, 2002 (2), 2003

Thirty Drawings, Mazey Hickey Gallery, Seattle 1987

Figure: Narrative, Whatcom County Museum, Bellingham, Washington 1986

123 Jackson Street Gallery, Seattle 1983, 1984, 1985

Testament, Cornish Institute for Allied Arts, Seattle 1984

Face to Face, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle1984

I Dream the Shattering Price of Wisdom, Ace Studios, Seattle 1983

and/or alternative space, Seattle 1979, 1981

Facing Death, Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington 1979

A Reading After Robbe Grillet, performance, Cabaret Apocalypse, Seattle 1977

Alexander Sasanoff Gallery, Seattle 1975, 1977

Selected Collective Shows

Butler Institute for American Art, Youngstown, Ohio 2018

Morris Graves Museum of Art, Eureka, California 2017

Objects of Impossibility: Contemporary Abstraction, Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara 2017

Art For Living, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, Seoul 2017

For the Earth: Art for Global Ecology, Postmodern, Washington DC 2016

Out of the Great Wide Open, Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara 2015

Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara 2013, 2014

Art For Peace, Vita Art Center,  Bell Arts Center, Ventura 2013

SCIART, Camarillo, California 2012, 2013

Print Electronico, computer-generated art, Buenos Aires 2010

Epocha Nueva, Casa Del Mexicano, Santa Paula, California 2010

Museum of Ventura County, Ventura, California 2009, 2014, 2015

California State University Channel Islands [curated by Jack Reilly], California 2009

I-5 Gallery, Los Angeles 2008

Erik ReeL and Friends at the Love House, Love House, Ventura, California 2008

Earth and Sky, Galerie 251, Ventura, California 2008

Rainbow Alliance Show, Rainbow Alliance LGBTQ Support Network, Ventura, California 2007

Picasso, Chagall, and Contemporary Master Prints, Modern Masters Gallery, Palm Desert, California 2006

71st SAGA Annual Print Show, Society of American Graphic Artists [SAGA], New York 2004

17th Parkside National Print Exhibition, University of Wisconsin 2004

Works on Paper [curated by Matthew Pruit, Menil Sr Curator] McNeese State University, Louisiana 2004

Montpelier Center for the Arts, Montpelier, Virginia 2004

24th National Print Exhibition, ArtLink Contemporary, Fort Wayne, Indiana 2004

Las Vegas Center for Art and Design, Las Vegas, New Mexico 2004

Landscape Unlimited, abstract landscape, Chicago 2004

Caruso Woods Gallery, Santa Barbara 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008

Penumbral/Palindrome, scrim, Signal+Noise, Media Arts & Technology, Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE), UCSB 2003

Elizabeth Edwards Gallery, Palm Desert, California 2003, 2005, 2006

Linda Moore Gallery, San Diego 2003

Lisa Kurts Gallery, Memphis, Tennessee 2002, 2003

Contemporary Art Forum Santa Barbara 2000, 2001, 2002

World Peace, Pavilion for World Peace, Kobe, Japan 2000

Artists for World Peace, Karpeles Museum, Santa Barbara 2000

Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle 1986

New York, LA, Seattle, Center on Contemporary Art (COCA), Seattle, Los Angeles, New York 1985

City of Seattle Collects [curated by Howard Fox, LACMA], Seattle Art Museum Pavilion 1984

East / West Dialogue, curated by Gene Barto, Brooklyn Museum of Art], Seattle Art Museum, Seattle 1984

Testament, performance with dancers, Cornish Institute For The Arts, Seattle 1984

Silver Birds, performance, sound collage with Sue Ann Harkey, Seattle Art Museum Pavilion, Seattle 1981

Burning Angels, performance with dancers, Virginia Street Studio, Seattle 1984

Krakatoa Kriterion, curated by Erik ReeL, 123 Jackson Street Gallery, Seattle 1984

123 Jackson Street Gallery, Seattle 1983, 1984, 1985

Silver Birds, performance with musician Sue Ann Harkey, Seattle Art Museum Pavilion, Seattle 1981

Voices of Tomorrow, performance with Stuart Dempster, Kathleen Hunt, Polly Friedlander Gallery, Seattle 1981

Night Mind, Dark Voices, performance with musician Sue Ann Harkey, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle 1981

Silver Birds, performance with dancers, Virginia Street studio 1980

Foster/White Gallery, Seattle1980

William Traver Gallery, Seattle 1979

Kodak International, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC 1979

Angels, performance with dancer, featured reader, Poetry Seattle, 1979

A Reading After Robbe-Grillet, performance with dancer, featured reader, Poetry Seattle 1978

Nacreous Passion, Performance, choreographed by Kathleen Hunt, Washington Hall, Seattle 1978

6500 x 20, art created on a Xerox 6500, and/or, Seattle 1978

Bellevue Art Museum, Seattle 1978

Flux Fest [curated by George Maciunas] and/or alternative space, Seattle 1977

National Drawing Show [curated by Wayne Thiebaud] Del Mar Museum, Corpus Christie, Texas 1976

Improvisational Ensemble, Sam Rivers, Fred Hubbard, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington 1973

Collections

Represented in private collections based in Barcelona, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Dubai, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Houston, Indianapolis, London, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York City, Oakland, Paris, San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Barbara,  Santa Fe [NM], Seattle, and Seoul. Public collections include the Morris Graves Museum of Art, Seattle City Light, City of Seattle, Czong Institute of Contemporary Art, Museum of Ventura County, Whitman College.

Teaching

Color Theory for Professionals, Pioneer Square Art Education Foundation, Seattle 1981-1984

University of Washington, Seattle, art history as graduate student TA 1980

Seattle Central College, color theory, painting, life drawing, art history, design 1978-1983

Fort Worden Gifted High School Program, Pt. Townsend, Washington 1978, 1979

Public Service

Governor's Award for Public Service, Washington State, 1985

Seattle Arts Commission Special Task Force on Media 1977

Seattle Arts Commission Special Task Force on Educational Institutions 1977

Selected Writing

Pterodactyl Cries: Art, Abstraction, and Apocalypse, book, 2021

Society805.com online magazine, arts editor, art and drama writer 2011-2018

At The Corral, script, performed by The School Children's Theatre, Boulder, Colorado 1988

Schnegeruschka, script, performed by The School Children's Theatre, Boulder, Colorado 1988

Akbar's Market, script, performed by The School Children's Theatre, Boulder, Colorado 1987

Columnist on art, Bellevue Journal-American daily newspaper, Seattle 1979-1983

Arts Editor, Seattle Voice Magazine 1979-1980

International Correspondent for art magazines including Vanguard, ArtExpress 1978-1982

West Coast correspondent, High Performance 1978-1981

Northwest Correspondent, ArtWeek 1978-1981

Selected Artists Talks

Neither Supernatural Nor Mechanical, Artists Talk/interview, Whitman College, 2021.

Full Circle: NW School, with Jae Carlsson, Morris Graves Museum of Art, panel performance, 2016

From Fluxus to Rebar, Artists Talk, Museum of Ventura County, Ventura, California, 2014.

Lecture in conjunction with solo exhibition at Whatcom County Museum, Bellingham, Washington, 1986

Panel on contemporary painting, Whatcom County Museum, Bellingham, Washington, 1986.

Symposium on Visual Art and Media: Politics and Critique. Seattle Media Library, 1985.

Critics Symposium on Painting, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington, 1985.

Titian to Clemente: Transformations in the Painterly Tradition in Italy, Cornish Institute of the Arts, 1984.

The Rebirth of Painting. Public lecture, Seattle Art Museum, 1984.

Dialectics of Transavantguardism: Wolfgang Max Faust vs. Germano Celant, Seattle Public Library, 1984.

The Berlin Wall, Urban Graffiti, and the New Painting, Seattle Pacific University, 1984.

Sources in My Work, public lecture, Cornish Institute for the Arts, Seattle, 1984.

Painting Today, Public lecture, Cornish Institute for the Arts, Seattle, 1984.

Painterly Painting, Again, Public lecture, Seattle Art Museum, 1984.

Late Painting: Picasso, Matisse, de Chirico, Chagall, et alia, Public lecture, Seattle Art Museum, 1983.

Late de Chirico and the Next Generation: Clemente, Palladino, Cucci, Public lecture, Seattle Central College, 1983.

Teaching Color Theory: Preparing for a Digital World,  Lecture series, Seattle Public Library, 1983.

Teaching Color Theory: Preparing for a Digital World, Lectures, Seattle Central  College, 1983.

Color Theory: The Bauhaus Tradition Today: Itten, Klee, Albers, Dahn, ReeL, lecture, Seattle Central  College, 1982.

Color Theory: Gerrittsen Schema, Visual Constancies, Color Effect, and Painting, Seattle Central College, 1981.

An Objective Criterion for Temperature Contrast: Itten was Wrong, Seattle Central College Auditorium, 1981.

Fluxus Flumoxed, Lecture commemorating George Maciunas, Fluxus founder, Seattle Masonic Hall, 1980.

Color Theory: Preparing Visual Artists for the Computer Age. Seattle Public Library, 1980.

Color Theory Today: Why Classical Mixing Theories Do Not Work, Seattle Public Library, 1980.

Color Theory: Gerrittsen Schema, Transmission Curves, and Digital Representations, Seattle Central College, 1980.

Color Theory: A Comprehensive Conceptual Scheme for Artists and Designers, Seattle Public Library, 1980.

Visual Constancies in the Teaching of Color Theory to Artists and Designers, Seattle Central College, 1980.

Edwin Land and Impacts on Color Theory: What Artists Need to Know, Seattle Central  College, 1980.

Cafe Apocalypse: Performance Art Today, Evergreen State College, 1979.

Performance Art Today: Sources and Contexts, Public lecture, Washington Hall, Seattle, 1979.

ReeL's technique exhibits a high degree of transparency, layering, sfgraffito and graffitto, with a strong sense of hand, the hand-made, and an absence of any references to the material world. This work can be seen as a thorough-going critique of materialism, the machine or machine-made, and the triumph of feeling over the manufactured. For ReeL, marking is a defining characteristic of the human and the primordial act of signification and meaning for human consciousness.  

Nikki Arconi, 2011

See also Bibliography and Bio.