Bolm Arts Collective is excited to celebrate the decades-long career of Jon Eric Narum, a true Austin icon, with “Pareidolia: A One Man Group Show.” In this quietly expansive show, lifelong artist and Austinite Jon Eric Narum presents work from his three creative identities: The Sky Guy, Juan Diego Nerumski, and Hercules da Vinci, each with their own distinct way of seeing and making. What began as a practical way to separate his work has grown into something more personal: a way of embodying different creative impulses through invented personas. These characters now have their own imagined stories, beliefs, and gestures, shaped by Narum’s background in theater and his ongoing interest in how we define ourselves.

First came The Sky Guy, the artist’s persona whom Narum embodies; he employs realism to paint expansive skies full of hidden faces and forms. Juan Diego appeared next, a more reserved and private persona, who explores abstraction through a meditative lens expressed in a vibrant, saturated palette and smooth gradients. The final character, Hercules da Vinci, is perhaps the most eccentric of the bunch. Despite his hulking frame, he hides beneath the floorboards of Narum’s studio. When Narum isn’t looking, Hercules steals his discarded studio rags, turning them into textured, surprising compositions. Despite their differences, each of Narum’s characters is connected by pareidolia, as faces and figures rise from abstraction in a masterful use of color and form.

Narum’s practice reflects on how art can become a kind of performance, not in the sense of pretending, but of stepping fully into different corners of oneself. By giving each style its own voice, history, and even body, Narum doesn’t just allow himself to paint differently; he gives those differences room to breathe, to evolve, to matter. These aren’t just stylistic experiments; they’re lived perspectives, shaped by distinct emotional and creative logics.

“Pareidolia” invites us to consider what becomes possible when we stop asking our work, or ourselves, to be just one thing. Maybe identity in art isn’t something to pin down, but something we expand into when we are open to all aspects of who we are and can be.

About the artist:

Jon Eric Narum was born in 1950 in Austin to artist parents. It was his parents’ love of art that had a profound effect on Narum’s desire for visual self-expression and his eventual pursuit of an art career. Narum acquired his BFA from UT Austin and his MFA from the University of Oklahoma.

From 1988 to 1999 Narum lived in Lawrence, Kansas, where he taught various art classes at the Lawrence Arts Center and performed in local theater troupes.  Narum relocated to his birthplace of Austin in the spring of 1999, where he was able to rediscover a direction for his love of painting, the marvelously varied Texas skies.

Over his decades-long career, Narum has shown all over and won numerous prizes, but he doesn’t keep a record of his accolades. For him, the value of his art is not found in institutional recognition or in sales, but in community and personal expression. Narum is a Hopeless Romantic, Child of the 60’s, Certified Perfectionist, Vegetarian, Economic Efficiency Expert, and a true icon in the Austin art scene.