Dan Erling, 43, is president of Accountants One, a major financial-industry recruiting firm. He is also the creator of the Search for the South’s Funniest Accountant and author of “MATCH: A Systematic, Sane Process for Hiring the Right Person Every Time.” He lives in Dunwoody with his wife, Michelle, and two sons. He talked recently about his love for abstract painting.
When I was at Stone Mountain High School, I really found myself through art. I’m dyslexic and I wasn’t a very good student as a young person. But I had this great art teacher who kind of took me under her wing. She really helped me to recognize that I had some talent and I could be intellectually successful.
That encouraged me to try harder in all of my classes.
I remember saying, if I can do this in art class maybe I can do it in math.
Because of my success in the art room, I really started to try academically. I went on to Georgia State and Emory — studying mathematics. It wound up that I was terrific at everything but arithmetic; still had trouble with “less than” and “greater than,” but I excelled at calculus.
One Friday night about 10 years ago, after this exhausting stressful week of kids and work, I decided to start painting. With the stress of placing CFOs and controllers and working with high-level clients across the city, I just needed an outlet. I wanted to go back to that creative world.
Painting is something so small that you can control, something that you can just totally escape in. So I leave my Friday nights free for it. I’m very disciplined about that. That’s the time to myself, to escape and do abstract painting. Usually I start around 10 p.m. and continue until 1 or 2 in the morning. I have to be careful, though. There have been times where I have gotten carried away, looked up and noticed that it is 5 a.m. I can get by with just a little sleep, but when that happens my Saturday is ruined.
My wife is a great painter. She’s an art teacher, so we have a studio in the basement where I paint. My wife has been trained to paint realistically — I wish I had her ability. But when I was looking for inspiration I didn’t want to be stuck in realism. I wanted to do something non-objective and freeing. So I started to think about random things.
That’s how I came up with my “Seven Rocks Project.” I was digging through my drawers and I came across these rocks that I had picked up when I was caving, spelunking, with some friends of mine years ago on the Georgia-Tennessee border. I decided to use them as my guideline, my subject matter, for painting.
I’ve always loved the concept of randomness: Why did I meet those friends who took me to that cave? Why these seven rocks? What set of “random” factors led me to this interview? What series of events has led me to the trusted business relationships which I am so thankful for?
All this stuff is something I don’t get to think about during the week. But as I start painting on Friday night I can really get into the connections. It is a time to reflect on the bigger meaning of things. My painting is the absolute antithesis of my job. It’s about freedom, about putting paint on canvas.
I don’t care what people think about the pieces; this is my thing. Whatever someone walks away with from one of my paintings I’m fine with. I’m not trying to be Rembrandt. At the end of the day, it’s for me.
More than anything, this is my way to recharge my batteries after a crazy hectic week. It is the best way that I found to feel great. It puts all the energy back into my life. It makes me touch that creative element of myself that you don’t get to touch as a business person.
As told to Tom Sabulis, tsabulis@ajc.com
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