TAWA at 45
The Exhibition
Eric Fowler
NYC 1: Lower Manhattan
oil on canvas, 2020; 20″h x 16″w
Eric Fowler’s career as an artist is about making images to answer aesthetic questions and or commissioned assignments. He was trained as both a fine and commercial artist at the college level and pursued a career mainly as an illustrator who painted for galleries.
After graduating with honors from Pratt Institute, he lived and began seriously working freelance in the lower eastside of New York. Early clients were Travel & Leisure and other journals. Once established he moved to Lambertville, NJ, still actively doing book covers, magazine illustrations, and just painting. Eventually, he and his wife moved down river to buy their first home in Trenton. Here he expanded his reach and in 1990 won the top NJ scholarship award for his paintings of Dante’s Inferno. Galley and freelance are what he did for years and eventually moved back to NYC. His client list expanded to major magazines and clients like Gourmet, The New York Times, and Harper/Collins, as well as illustrations for Atlanta, Cleveland, and Hartford newspapers. All this time he made every effort to paint when not illustrating. He was employed as collections manager at the Society of Illustrators beginning in 2010 and is a live time member there.
His work is exhibited in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and New York.
He has been an adjunct instructor at several institutions, teaching fine and commercial art classes. They include Moore College of Art, The School of Visual Arts, and the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, beginning in 1986. Currently teaching the history of illustration at SVBA.