Erik ReeL's work has followed a life-long pattern of exploring aspects of how human consciousness processes visual stimuli, or what is often called cognitive processing, especially when involving two-dimensional information. Early on, this was based on a deep study of color theory and visual ambiguities and visual constancies involved in how the human brain reads information on a two-dimensional surface. It is ReeL's contention that with the rise of graphically interfaced personal computers and the ever-increasing involvement of more and more humans with flat screens in their daily lives, that an understanding and deeper awareness of how two-dimensional cognitive processing operates and works is central to civilized human experience and should be a focus of visual art. Further, central to ReeL's work is an exploration of human marking on a surface; for ReeL, marking is a defining characteristic of the human and the primordial act of signification and meaning for human consciousness.
Born in Seattle in 1952, Erik ReeL attended Whitman College majoring in mathematics and philosophy, the University of California, at Berkeley, and the University of Washington majoring in art history and studio art, graduating summa cum laude in 1975. ReeL studied art history with Rainer Crone, painting with Jacob Lawrence, Michael Spafford, Bob Jones, and Michael Dailey, color with Richard Dahn [a student of Albers], sumi-e with George Tsutakawa, and, independently, Chinese brush with Hsai Chen.
In the late 1970s Reel wrote for Vanguard, ArtExpress, and High Performance art magazines, Artweek, and/or Notes, weekly reviews and a column for the Bellevue Journal-America daily newspaper, and was the arts editor for the Seattle Voice city magazine. During this time he sat on two Seattle Arts Commission Special Task Forces: Media and Educational Institutions in the Arts. Reel was involved in performance art as well as writing and painting, performing in pieces at the Seattle Art Museum, Cornish School for the Allied Arts, Washington Hall, Poetry Seattle, the Salon Apocalypse, and several art galleries, usually collaborating with musicians and dancers, while exhibiting paintings regularly with the original Jackson Street Art Gallery located upstairs at 123 Jackson Street. ReeL taught art history, color theory, and life painting for five years at what is now Seattle Central College.
ReeL left Seattle in 1984, essentially dropping out of society for almost a decade, for the most part not exhibiting or publishing during this time with the notable exception of a solo show of drawing at Seattle's Mazey Hickey Gallery in 1987.
ReeL’s painting has alternated between phases of figurative and abstract imagery, ignoring the distinction between drawing and painting. In 2009 ReeL stripped all references to the material world from his work as a critique of the hyper-materialism pervading contemporary society.
In a presentation at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, Portland-based art critic, Jae Carlsson [Art Dish, ArtForum] pointed out ReeL’s visual and philosophical connections to earlier Seattle painters Morris Graves and Mark Tobey, while at the same time indicating that ReeL had pushed his work beyond Post-Modernist limitations.
In a 2010 catalog of ReeL’s work, art critic Nikki Arconi wrote:
ReeL’s technique exhibits a high degree of transparency, layering, sfgraffito and graffitto, with a strong sense of hand, the hand-made, and an absence of any references to the material world. This work can be seen as a thorough-going critique of materialism, the machine or machine-made, and the triumph of feeling over the manufactured. For ReeL, marking is a defining characteristic of the human and the primordial act of signification and meaning for human consciousness.
In 2017, the following statement was published regarding understanding ReeL’s work:
Like an archaeologist uncovering the remnants of written language ReeL creates meaning from, not just what is visible, but in what has been obscured. To understand ReeL’s work one must look at his attraction to such seemingly incongruent influences as erased whiteboards, blizzards, improvisational music, and abandoned industrial sites. His work celebrates the meaning in remnants, the hidden, the random and destroyed.
In 2019 ReeL relocated to Portland, Oregon, where he currently maintains his studio and lives with his wife, Rhonda P. Hill.
ReeL's visual art is collected on five continents and represented in private collections based in Buenos Aires, Berlin, Chicago, Dubai, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Houston, Indianapolis, London, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York City, Oakland, Paris, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Santa Fe [NM], Seattle, and Seoul. Public collections include the permanent collections of the Morris Graves Museum of Art, Seattle City Light, City of Seattle, Czong Institute of Contemporary Art, Museum of Ventura County, and Whitman College.