The American artist Erik Thor Sandberg grew up in Quantico, Virginia. Mainly self-taught, it was in high school that he began to develop a passion for artistic communication, and deciphering and emulating the work of other artists and endeavouring to engage in a symbolic dialogue became his major ambition. He started to express himself through oil painting, perfecting his technique and drawing inspiration from great masters such as Goya and Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

Creating inventive imagery ranging from panoramic to intimate, Sandberg pushes the skilful illusionism of master painting to the contemporary edge of magical realism. Sandberg’s earlier work depicted secular scenes of vice and virtue from a standpoint that human nature is inherently flawed. More recently, these fundamental flaws in life have continued to draw Sandberg to dissect and expose pieces of human nature. His skilfully crafted images, both miniature and larger than life, reveal the unexpected way in which imperfection makes life interesting. While beauty remains a constant component of Sandberg’s work, he contrasts it with the unsettling and unsightly elements of imaginary worlds that hinge, unsettlingly, on the verge of our own.

Erik Thor Sandberg creates dark dreamscapes where the protagonists live engulfed in the chaos of a decadent dance of interactions which verge on lucid madness. His painting creates magic illusions in an uncanny connection between oil paints and human flesh. The bodies portrayed are simultaneously beautiful and grotesque, and their impending actions within the narrative constitute visceral allegories which present a psychological portrait of us as a species, with all our failings, vices and virtues, confusion and hope, paranoia and striving for freedom. The themes vary, but the fundamental goal is to show different facets of humanity in an unflinching contrast between what is beautiful and good and what is bad or ugly.

Sandberg now lives and works in Washington, DC. His work has been exhibited at public and private venues both in the USA and internationally, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in Washington, Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts, and the Baker Museum in Naples, Florida.

Erik Thor Sandberg’s website is here, his Instagram page here, and his Facebook page here.

We are very grateful to our Russian friend Yuri for introducing us to the work of this artist, and for supplying most of the images.