Quick Facts
Biography
Eric Joyner (born c. 1960) is a contemporary American artist whose body of work has focused on robots and donuts.
Early life and career
Joyner grew up in San Mateo, California, and spent some time in Medford, Oregon, after his family moved there. He was always interested in art and attended the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He began working as a commercial illustrator in 1984 and created the cover art for several video games, such as Tales of the Unknown, Volume I: The Bard's Tale, Realm of Impossibility, and Archon II: Adept.
Robots and donuts
In 1999, he chose to focus only on topics that he likes. After having collected Japanese toy robots as a hobby, he chose to use them as subjects. In 2002, he felt that he needed another element to work off of. Inspired by the film Pleasantville, in which Jeff Daniels paints donuts, Joyner added donuts. The donuts have been featured as both objects of desire and adversaries to the robots.
Several of his paintings are used as set pieces in the TV show The Big Bang Theory. An adaptation of his 2007 work "The Collator", "Submerged", is featured on the album cover for the Ben Folds Five album The Sound of the Life of the Mind.