Erik Sandgren

Erik Sandgren probes the Pacific Northwest landscape with sensitivity to myth and origins. He was born in Corvallis and grew up in the environs of Oregon State University where his father was a noted painter and OSU art professor. Erik went east to study at Yale. On the broad path of Ivy League liberal arts he furthered his practice and theory of visual art under the mentorships of Erwin Hauer, Benard Chaet and Gretna Campbell. Like a homing salmon, Sandgren returned in 1989 to the headwaters of his art and early life in the Pacific Northwest. He served through 2017 as the one-person art department at Grays Harbor College in Aberdeen, Washington. Sabbaticals and a Fulbright Exchange enabled artist residencies in England and France from where Sandgren sought out and painted sacred sites of ancient Europe. Erik now lives in Portland with painter/printmaker Kathryn Cotnoir, near their daughter and extended family that has been in the area more than a century.