Art of Darkness: Eric Petersen suffers from schizophrenia, but his etchings soar with lyrical and playful images

EUGENE artist Eric Petersen, whose etching "Fish's Cycle" won Best of Show at the Eugene Mayor's Art Show last month, fidgets gently as he talks about art. He crosses and uncrosses his legs. He runs his hand back and forth across his knee. "You know, I hear voices," he says, quite matter of fact. "Once in a while I hallucinate. I need more exercise. When I'm bothered by voices, I punch the pillow. I take a shower. I start running. Can I have a soft drink? The medicine makes me thirsty."

Petersen, 45, is schizophrenic. The illness struck in his early 20s, when he was a student in Ashland. Today, he's a hulking, childlike man with great sweetness of personality, a determined following among Eugene artists and a slight but persistent sense of disconnect. He supports himself, with his family's help, working part time as a janitor at a local mental health center. Mental illness hasn't kept him, though, from a life in art. Working steadily at his home studio and at the print studios at Maude Kerns Art Center and Lane Community College, Petersen has produced an extensive series of colored etchings that are lyrical and seemingly innocent, populated by a strange menagerie of animals and Biblical symbolism.

Some of his work has been published, on cards and calendars, as well as in a 1997 anthology of art by mentally ill artists titled `Sunshine From Darkness." "I work hard," he says. "I am workmanlike. I do one or two prints a month. That's a lot for me. I'll tell you, it's a sacrifice to be an artist."

Eugene painter Bob DeVine, who has known Petersen for 15 years and owns a number of his works, calls him a "naive" artist in the outsider art tradition. "I really do respect his work," DeVine says. "It's strong work. It's intelligent. It's considered. And it's personal and unique. You don't find many artists that original. His work always has animals. It's always going back to Adam and Eve, male and female, his relationship to the church and to God - and his relationship to the feminine."

Schizophrenia has left Petersen estranged from much of the rest of the world, DeVine says: "With animals, he feels a camaraderie, and that is fused all through his work."

Petersen grew up in Eugene, in a family with deep Oregon roots. His drawing talent showed up early in childhood, when he would make his own illustrations for Dr. Seuss stories. His family, though, didn't encourage his art - "He kind of grew up in the wrong family for that," acknowledges his mother, Marsha Petersen - and it wasn't until he arrived at Lane Community College in the 1970s that Petersen began to study art seriously. It was there he came under the tutelage of art teachers Tom Blodgett and Craig Spilman; Spilman was on the mayor's show jury that awarded Petersen Best of Show last month.

"This man is a real state treasure," Spilman says. "His work appeals to the occasional mature side of me, and it appeals to the child as well." The jury chose Petersen for the show's highest honor because jurors wanted to select someone who was "unique," he said. Petersen continued his studies at what was then Southern Oregon State College, where he earned a bachelor's degree in art. Except for a brief stint in Portland, he's been living in Eugene ever since.

"Do you want to see my first print?" Petersen suddenly asks, going into a back room to find it. "Captain and Bird" is a dark, intense portrait of a sea captain with a parrot, drawn in a looping, convoluted hand. In some ways, the picture has more polish than Petersen's current work, which is deliberately primitive, almost childish, while retaining the dark undertones. From a 6-inch stack of prints sitting on a table in his living room - which is furnished, student-like, with a minimum of furniture and maximum of stereo equipment - Petersen pulls a print titled "Pops on Poppy Bed."

In it, at center, a couple tries to sleep. Around them are several sheep, enclosed in separate circles; above them is a demonic looking figure of a woman. "She's a she-ape," the artist says. "I call her a she-ape."

The sheep have a simple relationship to the sleeping couple. "Don't you see?" Petersen says. "These people are trying to sleep in their bed, and they're counting sheep!"

Other ornaments are equally odd. Two fish are smoking cigars. A man walking a tightrope balances a lion's heart and a horse's tail at opposite ends of his pole.

"He looks at a lot of things in the world with a childlike eye," Spilman says. "And he has a tremendous amount of humor."

Petersen denies the popular, romantic notion that schizophrenia somehow contributes to creativity. To him, his illness is simply an obstacle, one that much of the world doesn't understand. "I didn't ask to have schizophrenia," Petersen says. "It's a disease no one wants, but some of us get." eefer@guardnet.com.