The Omnia Contemporary Gallery on Main Street of Grand Junction will feature the works of Eric Elliott, a painting professor at Colorado Mesa University. His collection of works is entitled “Variations” and showcases still life paintings.

Elliott teaches five classes at CMU this semester, primarily in the painting discipline.

“I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember,” Elliott said.

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He started his education at a community college in Arizona, studying graphic design, before falling in love with oil paint. He then “switched gears” and earned his bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley, then received his Master of Fine Arts in painting and drawing from the University of Washington.

Looking for a fresh start and a new perspective, Elliot sold all of his belongings and studied at the Jerusalem Studio School in Israel for one school year, in which he learned under one “master” in drawing for half the year and painting for the second half.

“It was definitely a unique experience,” Elliott said. “I would’ve stayed longer if I could.”

Because the school was not an accredited university, Elliott could not obtain a student visa and struggled both with language barriers and legal issues surrounding his stay.

“When I came back, it was like all the stuff I’ve learned and all the stuff I did before… How was I going to mash it together? What does it mean to take all that knowledge and put it into what I was doing before?” Elliott said.

Elliott described his art during and after graduate school as being focused on spectrums, dissolving forms, and showing individual objects as being part of a bigger picture.

“It isn’t just an individual shape, I want the shape to be part of the whole […] I want it to be interconnected, a spectrum between very realized and completely dissolved,” Elliott said.

Elliott hopes to make a unique impact on his audience through the blend of traditional painting with new ideas in his exhibit.

“I’m a traditional still life painter, but I don’t want people to see it as just painting a still life… I want them to know that there’s a message.”

“Variations” features still life images painted in a variety of styles, using color, light, and abstractions to create new dynamics within the painting.

“With the current show, the reason that I wanted to have the different paintings hung next to each other was so that people would see that there’s something more to it than just still life,” Elliot said. “If they were all painted in the same way, people would walk into the show and just say, ‘It’s a still life show.’ They wouldn’t start to think about how something is painted […] When there’s more than one painting of the same thing, painted in a different way, I feel like that brings up the why.”

He hopes his art will resonate with viewers in individual ways while communicating his own message as well.

“Each individual can have their own experience, but I would hope the longer somebody spends with [a piece], the more they get out of it,” Elliott said.

He says one of the most important things he’s learned throughout his career is the power in letting go of labels and boxes to let his craft take on its own message; he learned to have the freedom to let his art develop in any direction.

“That’s where I think the experimentation comes in,” Elliott said. “I was still trying to figure out how I wanted to paint what I wanted to paint and feeling like I needed to digest it into one thing. And now I don’t believe I need to digest it into one thing, I can do lots of different things.”

He communicates this message through the paintings in “Variations.”

“With this body of work, I feel more open and free to do whatever I want. In the past, I felt like I was trying to find my particular style, and now I realize that maybe the ways of painting and the messages are the thing,” Elliott said.

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Balancing his art with his teaching position at CMU has proved challenging in terms of finding time to dedicate to both, but he says that teaching helps him stay active in the art community.

“It’s hard to have enough time to paint; it would be nice to have a better balance between that,” Elliott said. “But when you’re an artist only, you’re in your studio and you’re isolated, you don’t really get to talk to people. So when I’m teaching, it’s like I’m interacting and talking about art all the time and it’s a lot of fun.”

As much as he enjoys teaching, he also sees the importance of solitary studio time to develop his craft and further his skills.

“I think of artists in the same way often as a scientist,” Elliott said. “We’re experimenting in our studio to communicate or to investigate the hidden things in life and the meanings behind things.”

Painting still life allows him to see the subtleties of his subjects and enhancing the connection between light, different parts of the whole, abstractions, and colors.

“Beauty is a byproduct. If you’re going to paint from life, you’re going to be painting beauty,” Elliott said. “It’s dealing with the sublime… the bigger message.”

Eric Elliott’s “Variations” exhibit will be open until Feb. 26. It is located at Omnia Contemporary at 639 Main St. in downtown Grand Junction.