Eric Joyner: Painter of Toy Robots

"The usual suspects"

"The last Tin Man"


"The Incident"

"Time Travelers"

Believe it or not, but toy robots have been somewhat a theme in my marriage. On our first Christmas together Scott gave me a red toy robot and read science fiction stories out loud to me. Connecting to the symbols from the beginning of our love story, I gave Scott a tiny little toy robot for our 10th wedding anniversary. This year for his birthday and our 15th wedding anniversary together, I had a special surprise for him. A couple of years ago when we visited La Luz de Jesus gallery in LA, we saw a beautiful small painting of a toy robot and admired it very much. This September we saw an exhibition by the same artist, Eric Joyner at the Shooting Gallery in San Francisco. Afterwards I checked out Eric's web site and saw that he had prints of his paintings for sale. I knew immediately that this was my present for Scott. The best part of this present was, that we visited Eric's studio and Scott didn't know where we were going until we rang Eric's door bell. A perfect surprise! Eric was so gracious and fun, showing us his art, although he was getting ready to pack for a show in Vegas. It was hard to pick out a print, because they are all wonderful, but I think Scott picked the best "The Time Travelers" (last image). I love the composition of the two scenes meeting in the middle. Samurai warriors fighting robots is the ultimate little boy dream. It is also interesting in the sense of two worlds colliding: the old japan versus the new.