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Born out of a deeply Scandinavian heritage of Danish and Norwegian descent, I grew in the light of conservation and respect for the natural resources around me. My grandparents taught me to love the earth and to never stop learning from it. In later years I would travel the West in search of larger measures of firmament, but I have always found my way back home.

As a graphic illustrator by nature, I draw from as many elements as possible, and as much as possible. The ability to create is the greatest use of the human mind. I have been developing my style through years of inspiration from nature.

Originally a fine artist studying at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in Denver, Colorado, I took my illustration a step further in introducing it to the digital realm while receiving my graphic design degree in Portland, Oregon. Using personal photography and traditional wet and dry media, I have merged all I know into realms of pixels and gamma. My interests lie heavily within the kingdoms of fauna and flora, forging them into images of natural history, folk art, fantasy, and the surreal.




CONTACT ERIK

hyrdedreng@yahoo.com
"...there are sounds in the wood."
— Bernice Nelson, Grandmother

Text By Erik C. Omtvedt

At the foot of giants I walked. Hands out, touching bark, gaining balance with the roots. I can still remember the feeling of touching a part of the living world that appeared larger than life. The big oaks swayed above my head, my grandparents watched guidingly as I took my three-year-old steps through the grove. This was a wonderland opening up before my eyes whose patrons spoke to me in ancient groans and rustles. The leaves knew vocabulary. The wood had voices. From atop a wooded hill I could see the twists of tree and granite meandering down into a bendy line of wide water far below, revealing the mythology of the Minnesota River Valley. From early on I felt the presence of the spirit of the woods. The voice was unshakeable. It was the forest where I first learned of real life. Of sacred life. From that point on, all happenings outside of its boundaries would prove lacking.
As life progresses for me, it becomes increasingly apparent that all of my travels and experiences—though they may be cloaked by terms of other neccesaties—are in all actuality, expeditions to encounter new realms of forestland. In essence, life has become a vessel to partake in an extensive streaming gallery of changing wooded scapes. And above every roughed bough, around every gnarled root and crooked trunk, there is a sentence which has yet to be spoken. There are words to hear for those who care to listen. There are sounds in the wood.