Alexandria, VA – Award-winning local artist Brent Erickson has channeled his lifelong love of fine art into curating a world-class personal collection. Erickson has spent more than 30 years gathering and curating an amazing collection of representational art, which is based on realism.
A longtime award-winning oil painter, Erickson’s honors include Best in Show at The Art League gallery last November. His work will be featured in a solo show in October of 2026.
At a recent celebration of autumn at his Mount Vernon home, he unveiled many of his own new paintings as well as many art works in his personal collection.
“I have been into art since I was a child,” he said. “I tried many forms of artistic expression including drawing, painting, lithography, metal sculpture, and bronze casting. When I moved to Washington DC, my former boss’s wife and daughter held a special art show for a young emerging oil painter from Wyoming by the name of T. Allen Lawson.”
As a newly minted congressional staffer at the time, Erickson says he was barely able to afford one of Lawson’s paintings, a landscape of the Old Lyme Connecticut area. But he was so taken by it he decided to make the purchase.
This became the catalyst of two seminal things in Erickson’s life, he said. “It kindled my desire to collect fine art, and it prompted me to begin the study of oil painting which I had never tried before.”
- Allen Lawson is now one of the top painters in America, and his early painting is one of the stars in Erickson’s act collection.
Beginning his own art collecting with that first landscape, Erickson decided to start a collection based upon a couple guidelines.
A painting or sculpture had to be based on realism or representational art. Erickson had painted abstracts in college, but the Lawson painting drew him toward realism, and he turned his own painting toward this style as well.
Second, a work had to be “something I loved passionately and that would fit into my home’s decorative style.” He focuses almost entirely on oil paintings.
“I have studied oil painting for more than 25 years. It is a wonderful and rewarding journey of never-ending learning,” he said. “This has helped me understand how artists create their art and it has enabled me to see things in paintings the casual observer may miss.” He added it has helped him appreciate and seek out those painters with extraordinary ability.
He is grateful to have some wonderful paintings in his home by masters that he can study and learn from every day. “This also has informed my own painting journey.”
Nature offers inspiration in Erickson’s works. “I like to paint flowers from my own garden and to use my own antiques as still life props,” he said. But he is starting to paint people more. “Every aspect of light falling on the human form in all its variations is inspirational.”
“After 30 years, I have more than 100 paintings and a few bronzes,” Erickson said. “But I try to curate how the paintings are hung in groupings, so things do not get visually cluttered.”
Erickson offers this advice to new art collectors: start with what you can afford but really focus on quality and take your time. He also subscribes to top art educational magazines to study and learn about new emerging artists.
“Many younger emerging artists are fantastic painters,” he said, “and their work is more affordable because they are just starting out.”
He also suggests a collector visit as many galleries as possible. “Before making a purchase, ask yourself if you want to look at that piece of art every day. If the answer is yes, then go for it. Living with art we love makes every day better.”
Erickson’s oil paintings can be viewed at www.RBEricksonFineArt.com
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