About the Artist

Faces and places are both fascinating. Each one can be beautiful in its own way, particularly when captured at precisely the right moment.

Under ideal lighting conditions and at strategic angles, facial expressions can tell a life story, even revealing latent personality traits that their owners might otherwise keep hidden from strangers.

Every living thing has this defining "look," but it is sometimes difficult to find. Likewise, even a seemingly ordinary location can take on dramatic significance, if you just know when and where to fix your eye.

It is the pursuit of these quintessential images that motivates Erik Scalavino to paint and photograph his subjects.

He is almost exclusively self-taught, having started as a child by copying Charles Schulz's Peanuts cartoons with colored pencils, crayons, and paper. Today, he uses oil paint, canvases, and his digital camera to produce his unique style of artwork. Adorning each Scalavino painting is his signature logo - a combination of his initials and lucky number, 6 - and the subject's name, which he hides somewhere on the canvas.

The unorthodox story of how Scalavino became an artist - discovering his artistic talent, then abandoning it, only to find it again years later - is the subject of a 2007 documentary, DRAWN.

In 2008, Scalavino, an avid world traveler, began turning into paintings some of the memorable scenes he's snapped with his camera. He's anxious to reveal this new body of work very soon.

Exhibitions

Providence, RI: Providence Art Club, Open Painting 2008 (Juried) - Feb. 2008

Pawtucket, RI: Chabot Gallery (Group) - May 2008

Hyannis, MA: Cape Cod Food & Wine Festival (Group) - June 2008