I completed this intricate commissioned painting and shipped it just in time for commencement weekend. It’s 18” x 18” acrylic on panel, in a hand-crafted frame by my brother.
Updating an old painting
I’ve been living with my “Fire” painting on the wall for 13 years. I took a workshop* in fluid acrylic painting in March and then found an excellent use for it. To my eye, the figure in this has always appeared to need improving. The painting never had an oil top coat, so everything was right for this update. I’m finally happy with it. *Thank you, Amanda Sage, for teaching in Paonia.
My collected works are now available as prints!
Available now! REPRODUCTIONS of sold works.
Custom prints made to order. Paper and canvas prints. Framing options are offered as well.
A closer look at underpainting
I’ve been starting with warm grounds for many years. In my “Colorado Dreamscapes” series I add texture and color variations in the gesso ground. In this painting, I blocked in with three darker warm colors.
My strokes were bold in the blocking in phase
Fine detail was overplayed in a bold delivery as well.
Many glazing layers yielded a completely different result than what one might expect from such a glowing underpainting.
Crested Butte North 32 x 38. oil on panel
Golden Afternoon - Mount Monadnock
My latest painting for Jason in Milford New Hampshire. Mount Monadnock is well known for standing alone.
This painting is intended to capture the warmth and humidity of an afternoon in early Autumn.
I travelled East to visit family in July 2021 and had the chance to go to the Jason Samuel Gallery and hang out with Jason.
"Colorado Dreamscapes" in Crested Butte, CO
Between June 13 and June 27, seven of my works I’m calling Colorado Dreamscapes will be hanging at Oh Be Joyful Gallery in Crested Butte, CO.
“Five years ago, I moved to Colorado from the East Coast. For decades, my painting style has been precise and realistic. Now, with the discovery of exciting new surroundings, I felt I was ready to experiment with painting styles beyond my traditional methods.
This body of work is a combination of capturing the essence of the complicated views around me while limiting my use of color.
With the strong drawing and design influences that are at my core, the result I’m seeing is the refreshing freedom of a “field sketch” where some elements are left unrefined.
Enveloped in altered light, this body of work has elements of mystery with a contemporary feel, creating my new approach to realism - Colorado Dreamscapes.”
Mount Sopris. Oil on Panel 15 x 15
Intermezzo 12 x 24 Oil on Panel
Sopris Sunrise. 32 x 38 Oil on Panel
Crested Butte South. 18 x 24. Oil on Panel
Maroon Bells 24 x 24 Oil on Panel
What? "Henry" is 42?!
The Henry Books reprints have become available
Collectors Classic: Out-of-Print Hardcover Cross-Country Cat Morrow Junior Books 1979 18 editions printed
Cross-Country Cat by Mary Calhoun is still in print! You can order the paperback edition from HarperCollins. All 13 hardcover books illustrated by Erick Ingraham are cherished collectors items. It is still possible to acquire classic editions with a search on Amazon. I have copies to offer for sale as well. Ask for a price list through my Contact Page. Full descriptions, reviews, awards for my books can be found on my book pages.
Now the five other “Henry” books have been reprinted and offered by Echo Point Books! (<link here!)
1983 Book Illustration
Lost Treasure from an Award-Winning Book
February 20, 2010
Imagine my surprise when I found this precise painting on paper hidden away in a presentation folder.
This dates back to 1981. I had just learned the techniques of airbrush, using thinned acrylic to gain some magical effects. I was testing out my style for Porcupine Stew. I was later dubbed a “magic realist” by Hilton Kramer.
This book won a Biennial Illustration Brataslava Award for Children’s book in Czechoslovakia.
AND The American Book Award: Best Art for Books. My award was a Louise Nevelson Limited Edition Sculpture.
1983 Interview -NH Newspaper
Monadnock Profile
Erick Ingraham’s a lucky artist, finding success on his own terms.
By Katherine Cox
Sentinel Staff Writer Saturday August 13 1983
PETERBOROUGH- The field of aspiring illustrators is as thick as a cloud of lightning bugs on the evening horizon. And chances for success, money and fame are elusive.
For the artist, commercial illustration often provides the only glimmer of hope for recognition in a society that puts painters and sculptors in the same category as musicians and poets: an eccentric group that must suffer miserly rewards for its aesthetic contributions.
Erick Ingraham, 32, is one of the luckier artists who turned to illustration to make his name known and has found success on his own terms.
There were years of getting by as a janitor, a carpenter or a draftsman,but in 1974, with a contract to illustrate “Producing Your Own Power” for Rodale Press, Ingraham was able to begin making a living as an artist.
“Having something in print is important for ammunition when you get to the streets of New York,” he said.
The Rodale Press gave Ingraham plenty of ammunition. An environmentally oriented publishing house, it allowed Ingraham to illustrate topics that coincided with his own interests, including a variety of books on gardening an shelter and animals.
“They were right up my alley.” said Ingraham, the son of a veterinarian and a school teacher.
His work with Rodale Press led to other publishers, and in 1977 he was commissioned to illustrate his first children’s book, “Harry and Shellburt.” a story based on the tortoise and the hare fable.
One reviewer wrote, “The text’s even, smooth style is welcome; but the more so, the unusually creative, skillfully drawn illustrations, which borrow warm colors and softly sinuous forms from nature.”
The use of natural forms could be called Ingraham’s trademark. Even the peripheral details that find their way into his pictures bring to life the natural world.
The nocturnal Ingraham works on one of his delicate illustrations
“I’ve always been a lover of detail,” Ingraham explained. “I like to have new things defined every time you come back to look at artwork. I want my art to live along time; I don’t want people to get sick of it.”
He often uses models for his sketched because he feels perspective and proportion are important part of the details that enhance his work. Also, I always research before I get too far on a project.”
His second book, “Cross-Country Cat’ published in 1979 and now in it’s fifth printing, was a big boost for his career and won him the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award as Honor Book for Illustration.
The American Library Association Booklist review said, “Ingraham’s earthy blue and tan tones provide some beautiful lighting effects for the soft focus drawings. They interpret the story well, summing up absolute involvement with both the desolate setting and the drama of Henry’s ordeal. Fresh in both concept and execution.”
The story of Henry the cross-country cat was ideal for Ingraham, an avid skier and devoted cat owner. To prepare for the book, Ingraham went to Colorado to get the feel of what the countryside was like.
Explaining style and attention to particulars, Ingraham said, “I like fantasy with a firm foot in reality. I’m an illusionist; I try to make things believable through a very realistic style. I go through the steps of precise expression, proportion, perspective – all these things I can see – so the a cat skiing will look like a cat skiing.
“I’m able to pull off fantasy well because I take in things like climate, sun direction, motion, gravity and wind direction.”
However, for his next book, “Old Blue,” a story about a young boy’s first trail drive, “I didn’t feel like going to Texas,” he laughed. “But I did learn to ride Western style.”
He diligently studied horses and bridle and the specifics of a cattle drive. “I wanted to get horses in my brain. They’re so hard to draw.”
Ingraham’s careful rendering of the finer details doesn’t go unnoticed. When “Hot-Air Henry,” more adventures with Henry the cat, was published in 1981, one reviewer commented, “Ingraham’s accompanying illustrations are exquisite and strikingly original in their play with complex height perspectives. The paintings feature refined, muted textures broken by effective details like basket weaves, the balloon canopy lines, or the feathery ridges of Canada geese.”
Ingraham admitted he’s a perfectionist and said he does it right “the first time, even if it takes longer. You don’t take short cuts, because you’ll just have to correct it later. If it takes longer to do something , it will be worth it.”
And once it goes to the printer, “If I make a mistake, it will be repeated thousands of times.”
So he’s a stickler, and it’s not surprising he won an American Book Award for original art in the field of book illustration last April for his latest book, “Porcupine Stew”, his first full-color production.
“It’s one of the best things that could have happened to me,” he said, adding that the illustrations were exhibited in the Society of Illustrators’ annual show in New York last spring.
“Porcupine Stew.” written by Beverly Major, was published last year, also winning the Parent’s Choice Award for best illustration in children’s books.
Art critic Hilton Kramer said, “Call it superrealism, magic realism, and whatever you like – this is the style that characterizes Erick Ingraham’s vividly executed illustrations for this book. It is a style anchored in the tradition of realistic observation, but is not bound to the naturalistic materials of realism.
“The magic realist moves easily between the world of nature and the world of fantasy, and this is something that Ingraham accomplishes with the requisite gift for invention and improvisation.”
It is this latest book, with a more sophisticated style and rich colors, that most clearly show’s Ingraham’s early training as a painter.
He said he’s always been an artist. “My mother has promoted me since I was two; she’s always encouraged me. She knew there was a possibility that if I started early enough I could make a living as an artist.”
He graduated from Kutztown (Pa.) State College in 1972 with a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting. Yet in high school in rural Pennsylvania he’d diverted his attention to music, playing the baritone horn and string bass.
“It’s important to function in front of large groups,” Ingraham said. “I needed that alter ego of being bold and able to conquer stage fright. It helped when I received my award in New York. If playing music led to nothing else, it led to my being able to control my nerves in front of a crowd.”
Ingraham is a tall man with shaggy hair and a mustache. His quiet voice and fair features give him an aura of shyness, and one suspects he’s most comfortable hidden away in his studio, apart from the rest of life’s distractions.
Or perhaps gliding across a winter field, a solitary figure skiing through the silent countryside.Ingraham said he leads a “flip-flop life.” While most people make their living during the day, Ingraham finds evening the best time to work.
“I like to experience life in the daytime without being chained to a desk. Normal business hours are better used for relaxation and enjoying the sun. When the earth darkens, I make use of that time to get work done at my desk.”
Thus he is able to spend leisure time on what he likes best – skiing. There’s also tennis, swimming, canoeing and sailing, but that’s just to stay in shape for the slopes. “I focus the year around on skiing. I usually ski to the max and collapse.”
Skiing is what brought him north form Pennsylvania three years ago. He wanted to be where there was more snow and opportunity to ski. After a visit with his grandmother in Peterborough, he moved up just before ski season in 1980.
And while the past few winters have not produced the abundance of snow New Hampshire is famous for, Ingraham has not been disappointed. In fact, he recently purchased a home in Peterborough with enough land for him to enjoy the nature he cherishes and recreates so vividly.
He’ll share the home with Olga the dog and Spider the cat.
Ingraham said he still doesn’t know a lot of people in the area, as his social life is subject to his upside down work schedule. “Work comes first,” he said. “I’m married to my work.”
Illustrating children’s books requires an enormous amount of time. “Porcupine Stew.” for example, took six months of preparation followed by six months of illustrating.
And while there’s an upcoming book based on a George MacDonald fairy tale germinating, Ingraham has decided to take time off from children’s literature and branch out.
He has not had to go far to find work – his artwork graced the July cover of Desktop Computing and the August issue of HotCoCo, two computer magazines published by Wayne Green Inc. in Peterborough. In addition, he has been commissioned to illustrate a cover for an upcoming book for the firm.
Is the transition from the fantasy world of childhood to the modern age of computers difficult? Not for Ingraham. “Children need to be entice into reading by pictures,” he said. And doing artwork for a computer magazine is similar in that he must draw the layman into computers.
Essentially, his art is not defines by age or genre. It’s allowed him to make a living and become known in the fickle art world. “I like doing illustrations for children of all ages,” he said
An early Sound Healing video
This is an early example of my video work of Ildi Ingraham performing a Sound Bath
Large Oil Commission - 2020
How do you capture the light of dusk? The sky required many overlaying coats and I made sure the darkened foreground had plenty of details.
Recent Commission
This a detail of a panoramic landscape in oil
An even closer detail of the clouds lifting out of the trees
This paining is only 14 x 28 so it felt like working in miniature.
An Historical Icon from 1996
I never imagined that a logo element I designed for the Connecticut River Bank in New Hampshire (now absorbed by a bigger bank) would be a powerful symbol we have to put on hold.
How to build a Poster
From thumbnail to final, here is how I built the Mountain Harvest Festival Poster (for last year, which was postponed). The festival THIS YEAR is September 23, 24, 25, 26 2021
A unique commission project
This painting of the Milky Way was commissioned by the Appalachian Mountain Club as a gift for a retiring executive. Completed and shipped to Boston at the end of February.
Milky Way over the Hundred Mile Wilderness, Maine. Oil on panel 36 x 30
Commissioned Landscape
A moody landscape of Needle Rock in Crawford, Colorado. Oil on 17 x 29 Panel framed in quarter-sawn oak and tiger maple liner
Portrait One of a Night Blooming Cereus
Night Bloom - Oil on Panel 38” x 32”
Bird Migration Map
This map, I recently completed, takes a sampling of song birds based in Vermont in the summer and generally describes where they go in the winter.
This will appear in a magazine and as a poster
An ancient Juniper near Paonia
My first hike around the Jumbo Mountain area was inspirational. I painted this 24 x 24 inch oil on panel back before I even knew I was moving to Paonia, CO. I recently revised this work after I realized a few of the details of the foreground were needing clarification. It’s hanging in the Main Street Gallery in Carbondale, Colorado.
Lamborn in Summer 24’ x24” Oil on Panel
Mount Crested Butte painting
This painting was delivered to RAModern Gallery in Crested Butte and has been purchased.
Mount Crested Butte 36 x 36 Oil on Panel