Erickson concerns himself with transcending the picture plane, and in his newest series of paintings he plays with both flattening the surface and creating abstracted objects. They float behind his imaginary creations, enabling a world of depth in the work's black galaxy. When asked about the origin of the apparent lettered shapes and colors, he calls them 'melted cartoons' and in a style he refers to as 'Cartoonesque.' Mark was influenced by the flat colors and text balloons of comic books and began to abstract them from the inside out. He exaggerates the effect, creating paintings in which composition is more important than content. By mixing metallic paints with oils & acrylic, he is further able to dramatize the floating elements, letting them shine in an eye popping arena before the blackened plane. The exaggerated spaces in Erickson's paintings give the works a magnificent presence and power.