Artist Bio

Erik was born in 1966 in Vienna, Austria. He moved to the United States when he was 13 years old and lived in Virginia where he attended the College of William and Mary and studied German Literature and Political Science. He then moved to North Caroline where he continued his literature studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned a Masters and a Doctorate. While finishing his degree he began to be interested in computers and information science and soon pursued this field as a new career. He worked for the UNC's School of social work for several years and then started his own database company consulting with local and regional universities, community colleges, school systems and many nonprofit organizations.

He was interested in photography since early in his childhood when he traveled extensively throughout Europe and the United States. After taking several photography classes, Erik started to work for the University of Virginia's Central Electron Microscopy Facility where he developed the photographic slides and plates of scientific specimens of researchers at the university's medical school. From there his interests grew in photography to include travel, sports, macros, landscape, animal and general nature photography. He has worked with both film and digital, but has fully embraced the digital revolution since he believes that it has allowed the artist unprecedented control of the work from inception to completing the process in the digital darkroom. Erik has taught photography courses for Duke University and the University of Washington and has exhibited widely in North Carolina before relocating to Washington State.