Uncovering Caribbean Beauty: An Interview with Our May/June 2019 Cover Artist

Shari Erickson is an American contemporary artist who spends much of her time exploring the Caribbean. “For three decades my artwork has focused on the Antilles islands, recording the beauty of the tropical landscape and the rhythm of its culture,” says Erickson, whose work Pretty in Pink appears on our May/June 2019 cover. The painter’s love of the human form and movement – infused with light and vibrant color – is at the heart of her work.

We took a minute to talk to Erickson about her gorgeous paintings.

Saturday Evening Post: Can you tell us more about what inspired you to paint the image that appears on the May/June 2019 cover of The Saturday Evening Post?

Shari Erickson: Inspiration is easy to come by in these beautiful islands. There’s an abundance of tropical landscapes, bright colors everywhere, and a lack of commercialization. The scene of the cover art is an everyday sight; just a passerby returning from the market, protecting herself from the midday sun.

Post: Do you know the woman in the piece? Can you share the details of the place, time, and elements of the painting?

Erickson: I didn’t meet the lovely lady in the piece. I try not to be an annoying tourist, being intrusive or disturbing the natural event. Essentially, I’m a studio painter working with oils on canvas. I want to record as much as I can, as fast as I can, to capture the normal moments of island life. So in my travels I rely on sketches, photos, and bullet point notes that return to my studio in the woods where I compose the elements of a memory. For instance, sometimes I might depict a chattel house from Antigua with a banana tree from St. Lucia and a child I met in St. John.

Post: Why are you inspired to paint these Caribbean scenes?

Erickson: I love these people and places that I want to record and celebrate before they are gone.

Post: Why do you say “before they are gone”? Are elements of island life disappearing?

Erickson: Of course, time and tourism take their toll in the Antilles, as with especially beautiful places everywhere. Even those unpredictable hurricanes (which seem to be getting worse) can change the landscape along with irreplaceable architecture, delicate reefs, and traditional crops. Language, art, and customs bend to the future, but, thankfully, the people always remain “Irie” — defined as “pleasingly good.”

Post: Tell us about your choice of and placement of colors.

Erickson: My use of color is totally intuitive now, born of forty years mixing and experimenting so they describe my vision by working in unison.

Post: What media do you typically work in?

Erickson: I’ve had a lot of fun with many mediums on assorted media, but for me, nothing feels or performs as well as quality oil paints.

Post: What is your favorite thing about being an artist?

Erickson: It’s an incredible gift to realize that you really do see the world differently than others. Literally, your “vision.”  It takes years to understand this difference and nurture it.

Post: When did you first realize that you had a vision that was different? Have you always been an artist or is this something that you nurtured later in life?

Erickson: I always felt I had an artist inside me. As I grew up I became aware that I was literally seeing more details in things than others. In the way people might react passionately to hearing new music, I react the same to a new shape, a new color, a new way light falls through a tree that I hadn’t noticed before. Realizing all this, I studied and worked hard to become a professional artist.

Post: What advice would you give to aspiring artists?

Erickson: Find your voice and embrace it.  Draw and sketch constantly which becomes the reliable foundation of better paintings.  Stay loose — enjoy yourself.  Fight any sneaky voices that tell you judgmental lies and discourage you.  Work.  Work.

Classic Covers: A Hint of Spring

We are over it! We’re through with snow and slush, and we’re seeking hints of spring from our finest cover artists: Rockwell, Leyendecker, Dohanos, Falter, Clymer, and more.

Shoveling Floral Shop Sidewalk

“It was cold in New York,” Post editors say of this John Falter (1910-1982) cover, “and the cagey artist did most of his investigating behind glass, riding up and down on a Madison Avenue bus.” Painting the scene, Falter figured the frozen-faced workers would get an ironic chuckle from the fact that inside the flower shop window it is spring. Or perhaps not. Editors also had to note that Falter delivered his picture to the Post “just before the first of the winter’s oversize snowstorms hit New York. Then the artist hauled out for Arizona, where you may enjoy scenes like this in comfort.”

Springtime, 1935 Boy with Bunny

“You can’t buy a straw hat and make it look old by rubbing dirt in it,” Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) wrote in My Adventures as an Illustrator. “A hat has to be worn in the sun and sweated in and sat on and rained on. Then it’ll be old. And look it.” In 1935 Rockwell was asked to illustrate Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and he took the costuming very seriously. Desperately needing the right hat for Huck, he found just the thing in, appropriately, Hannibal, Missouri, Twain’s hometown. He spotted “a man walking along the road wearing a straw hat in a beautiful state of decay” and managed to buy it from him. Before long he ended up with a carload of clothes, “all old and rotten, battered, tattered, and splotched.”

Folks around Hannibal no doubt talked for a long time about that crazy guy who paid good money for their old duds, but the book illustrations were done to everyone’s satisfaction. And, like the boy greeting spring (left) with his worn hat and raggedy pants, some Post covers reflected the “Huck Finn look.”

Reading Among the Blossoms

Despite the fact that F. Sands Brunner (1886-1954) was very much a rugged outdoorsman who enjoyed camping, canoeing, and mountain climbing, most of his paintings reflect domesticity with adorable children and lovely women. This 1936 work from Post sister publication Country Gentleman is a case in point. The rich color and skillful use of lighting are typical of Brunner’s work. The Boyertown, Pennsylvania, native painted three Country Gentleman and two Post covers.

Appalachian Rhododendrons

Nature took over on a grand scale in most of John Clymer’s (1907-1989) 80 Post covers, and people were secondary. In fact, the viewer almost has to squint to see the family consisting of Dad with baby on his back, Mom in straw hat, and daughter leading them along the trail to Craggy Pinnacle near Asheville, North Carolina. Clymer told Post editors, “Sections of the trail wind through 10-foot-high rhododendrons, and the ground is carpeted with the rich pink petals of the flowers that have fallen.”

“These floriferous slopes look their best in mid-June,” editors noted in 1961, “as they did when the Catawba and the Cherokee held sway in the Carolinas. But if the scenery of the area has not changed much, the people have. What self-respecting Indian brave would have toted a papoose on his back?”

Hardware Store at Springtime

Artist Stevan Dohanos (1907-1994) loved hardware stores, and editors informed us that “the store he has painted affectionately for this week’s cover is a composite of many where Dohanos himself has obeyed the impulse, very strong in the spring, to buy a lot of new garden tools.” They warned, however, “this equipment buying is by all odds the most popular phase of gardening, for on a bland spring day there is nothing like the feel of a good rake or hoe in your hand—in the hardware store.”

Ready to Garden

This gentleman has made his trip to the hardware store and is hauling those spring purchases, lawn mower and all, back by public transportation. Perhaps more surprising is that the illustration is by the great J.C. Leyendecker, the man responsible for those chiseled Arrow Collar men who “haunted several generations of less fortunate-mankind,” according to David Rowland in a 1973 issue of the Post. In Leyendecker’s 40-plus years with The Saturday Evening Post, he showed amazing versatility as an illustrator, depicting subjects varying from elegant to comical in more than 300 covers.