Portrait (with reflection) Print

Eric Austin is an acrylic painter known for his fluid style and alluring works in female figurativism. Born in Orlando, Florida in 1981, his earliest art training came from his father, an architect, sculptor, and builder, who taught him the fundamentals of design, and how to draw in perspective from a young age. Austin would continue to study under his father for the remainder of his childhood until he made a decision to live with his mother at age fourteen. Moving across the country to reunite with his free-spirited Mother was the catalyst for solidifying a pursuit in the arts as a lifelong passion. This dramatic shift would reconnect Austin with his mother's side of the family and most importantly, his Aunt Rachael, an accomplished abstract painter. She encouraged him to become a painter, gave Austin his first set of paints and began working close with him to develop his skills with the brush, while also introducing him to more esoteric stream-of-consciousness painting techniques that provided a much-needed freedom from his father's rigid and technical training. "My Aunt is the reason I am a painter, she once told me 'if you want to become recognized as a great artist, you must become a painter. All the great masters were painters' those words were what drove me to create my first acrylic work. " Austin has been painting for more than 20 years, developing his easily recognizable style, he calls "li-ism" which is centered around the Neo-Confucious philosophy of "Li", meaning the markings in jade, or the grain of wood. The Philosophy of Li suggests a non-symmetrical order and beauty behind everything in existence which is expressed through an aesthetically beautiful arrangement of forms and patterns in nature. Austin hopes that his work will help people recognize a deeper beauty behind every-day life. "I am overwhelmingly convinced that all of life exists in an inspired creative state, pushing forth through everyone and everything, forever-expanding. We are all gifted access to vast wealths of creativity aching to pour through us in as many ways as possible. We are designed to create dreams and sculpt our worlds, we are all unknowing poets." Since launching a successful art career, Austin has received numerous awards, amassed a huge following on social media, and completed dozens of commissions for private collectors both in the United States and abroad. He is frequently commissioned as a portraitist and figurative painter.