Erik Scalavino
The pursuit of such quintessence motivates Erik Scalavino to paint and photograph his various 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 works with oil paint, canvases, and digital photography to produce his distinctive works of art.
“Each painting or photograph,” Scalavino explains, “be it a face or a landscape, is, to me, a portrait. It tells a story, allowing the viewer to gain an intimate understanding of that individual or place that’s represented.”
Adorning each Scalavino painting is his signature logo – a combination of his initials and lucky number six – and, in portraits, the subject’s name, which he hides somewhere on the canvas. The remarkable story of Scalavino’s unorthodox journey as an artist is the subject of a 2007 documentary, DRAWN. Since 2008, Scalavino’s work has been exhibited in galleries throughout Rhode Island and Cape Cod.
