Catherine Erickson
Oil Painter

Catherine Erickson was born in San Francisco California.  She grew up in the bay area and now lives in Lockeford, CA.  Her passion for her art started at an early age and has encompassed many different media including silk screen, wood and linoleum block prints, collage, sculpture, pottery and numerous painting mediums (gouache, watercolor, acrylic, oil).

Ms. Erickson has been the recipient of a number of awards and honors throughout her career, many in her high school and college years.  More recently she has participated in several juried events in her area including the Stockton Art League’s Fall Festival Show, The Lodi Community Art Center Annual Spring Show at the Mondavi Winery in Woodbridge, CA and The Delicato Vineyard’s annual show in Modesto, CA.  She was awarded a second place in the oils category at the 2005 Mondavi Winery Show and an honorable mention in the 2006 “Small Works” show at the Lodi Community Art Center Gallery for an oil on paper landscape.  She also has exhibited and sold her artwork at the “Lodi Art on the Square” annual event. Her most recent honors were two 3rd place awards in oils at the Flyway Art Show- at the 11th Annual San Francisco Bay Flyway Festival 2007 on Mare Island.

 She has been the solo featured artist at “The Field of Beans”   and “Scooter’s” cafés in Lodi as part of the “First Friday Art Hop” event.  She is a current member of the Lodi Community Art Center.  In February 2006 she was commissioned to hold a “Power Point” lecture and demonstration at the Lodi Library on her oil painting technique and style.  She also has donated art design work for many local organizations.

Ms. Erickson attended De Anza and Foothill Community Colleges in Cupertino, CA concentrating on art history, drawing and painting.  She attended San Jose State in San Jose, CA, majoring in fine art.  She is also “self taught” in the true sense of that title, based on the numerous years of self exploration in all forms of painting.

 Upon moving to the central valley of California, she also began pursuing a career as a professional artist.  She started her own faux finish, mural, and decorative painting business.  The business that now flourishes is “BY HAND.”  Her faux finish talents are well known in the surrounding communities and take her to such locations as Carmel and Pebble Beach, CA where she has worked on installations that have been as long as a year.  She has extensive knowledge with all forms of art and interior design and creation which include specialty finishes for walls, floors, cabinetry, furniture, and ironwork.  Many of her commissions involve hand painting of her original designs on walls, unique hand painted business signs, and residential and business mural and faux finish work.

While maintaining her business, she has never strayed from her passion for creating her own artwork, concentrating for the last ten years on oil painting as her medium of choice.  Her newest venture has been to open her own art studio and gallery in Locke, CA…… “Down by the River Studio.Gallery” opened in August 2007.  The small community atmosphere and the delta/river environment, and the surrounding rural towns and countryside present endless muse for her plein air painting. On any given day she can be seen out on the levees in the delta, painting away.  She is also a member of the plein air painting group “Da Group” in Benecia, CA

She has always kept the feelings she felt as a child, when she would draw and paint, on a big roll of newsprint paper, that her dad would bring home from his job as a printer for a newspaper. Her mother would roll it out on the hardwood floor down the family home’s central hallway.  She would create with pencil and crayon the images of her world on that roll of paper for hours. The feelings of freedom and of being exported mentally into that world, in her imagination, are deep in her heart and soul, and always will be.