Draft:Marilyn Erickson

Marilyn Erickson (born April 11, 1933) was an American painter born in Chicago and started her career at 16 years old as a professional trumpet player in the Chicago Symphony.

Musician
Marilyn Erickson was considered a child prodigy trumpeter at age 14 and was recruited to play with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 16. Marilyn was featured on national television performing a solo rendition of Flight of the Bumblebee

Painter
In 1949, at the age of 16, Marilyn accepted a 4 year scholarship to the Chicago Art Institute to study painting and philosophical Objectivism

1950's through 1960's
In July of 1953, Erickson met her husband Kenneth in Mesa Arizona while taking care of her ailing father Miner Rowe. The couple married and moved to Santa Monica California where she took a job at Douglas Aircraft as aircraft part illustrator. Soon after birth of their first child Kenlyn, the couple moved into a small home in Latigo Canyon Malibu where Marilyn was able to focus on further developing her painting skills. It was at this time that her popularity spread throughout the elite Hollywood crowd as she was a regular on the La Cienega Boulevard art scene circuit. Her paintings were purchased by many of the Hollywood elite actors of that era. Her clients included Elizabeth Taylor, John Wayne, Cary Grant, Doris Day amongst others. In 1964, the couple gave birth to their second child John Erickson who would later have success as a professional golfer.

1970's
Marilyn spent the 1970's developing her landscape oil painting techniques. She earned a Masters of Fine Art Degree from California University Northridge and studied abroad with renowned painter Frederick Taubes who was teaching at the time in Mexico. In 1974, while in New York City, Marilyn met with Salvador Dali and traded artwork with him.

1980's
In the late 1970's Marilyn was experimenting with printmaking including etchings, lithographs and mono prints. She started a company in Southern California to facilitate the increasing demand for her work, Erickson Enterprises. Erickson was the inventor of what she called Gravue Colle' which combined lithography with cut pieces which were then collaged onto a backing board to give a linear and geometric visual that became very popular in the 1980's. Marilyn's work was picked up by several agencies who then sold the works to decorate many corporate offices in the United States and Europe as well as a large contract with Denny's restaurant of which at least 5 of her pieces were on display in each location world wide for nearly 20 years. In the mid 1980's Marilyn moved to Lake Tahoe with her husband Kenneth and continued her print making until roughly the end of the decade.

1990's - 2000's
Marilyn and her husband Kenneth Erickson relocated to Sedona Arizona in 1992 and soon after she moved back into painting as she felt inspired by the southwestern landscapes particularly the red rock mountains and vistas of the Sedona area. Having lost a significant amount of her work to a rouge art dealer in San Francisco, she decided to open her own gallery "Erickson Studio Gallery" in the popular Creekside Plaza in downtown Sedona where she could concentrate on her work and interact with the public art community directly. This was the most prolific time in her art career as her original paintings were sold quickly and the invention of Giclee reproduction enabled her to offer very high quality reproductions of her original art.

Final Years and Death
Marilyn semi retired from painting at age 80 in 2013 to take care of her husband Kenneth, who's health was in decline and after he passed in 2015, she worked from a home studio in Sedona for her final years producing a limited number of semi abstract works that were not sold or promoted publicly. In 2023, Marilyn herself died peacefully at her son John Erickson's home in the San Francisco Bay Area shortly after her 90th birthday on April 27th of natural causes. A museum of her work is being constructed near Aetna Springs in North Napa County California.