Tampa artist, filmmaker, and storyteller commits his full grand prize winnings to charity while showcasing a long-developed collection of personal works via Johnny Depp's national art contest.

/PRNewswire/ - For over three decades, Eric Polins has influenced the way individuals and organizations present themselves to the world.

As a filmmaker, journalist, branding strategist, and storyteller, the Tampa Bay creative developed campaigns, films, narratives, and public identities for companies, nonprofits, executives, and communities nationwide. Yet alongside this client-focused career, Polins quietly assembled a deeply personal collection of mixed-media pieces that examine nostalgia, memory, music, mortality, Americana, and the emotional fragments carried through daily life.

Now, via Johnny Depp's nationwide The People's Artist competition supporting The Art of Elysium, Polins is presenting that body of work to the public for the first time on a broad scale.

He has also stated that if voters choose him as the winner of The People's Artist, he will donate the full $25,000 grand prize to The Art of Elysium, the nonprofit backed by the contest.

"The exposure would let me share this work with wider audiences, galleries, and collectors," Polins said. "I have spent decades developing this collection in private. At this point in my life, the chance to finally release it without reservation matters more to me than the prize itself. If supporters help me win, I want the entire $25,000 award to support the cause behind the competition."

Raised by an engineer father and an illustrator mother, Polins notes that his creative outlook was formed by equal parts order and creativity. After losing his father at age 17 and his mother four years ago, ideas of memory, time, legacy, and lasting emotion became central to both his personal outlook and his art.

"I have tried to treat each day as if it were my last since losing my dad as a teenager," Polins said. "Much of my work focuses on preserving moments, energy, influence, and feeling before they fade. Art became a method to retain elements that time eventually seeks to remove."

Polins produces layered mixed-media pieces that merge original illustration, line art, acrylic painting, typography, photography, and hand-cut sections of vintage imagery. Using thoughtfully chosen cultural references, he builds visual stories that connect generations through music, film, memory, and shared feeling.

"By adding organic, found, and tactile components, often sealed with resin, each work functions as a kind of time capsule," Polins said. "They celebrate influence, legacy, and the narratives that formed us."

His creations draw from artists and cultural figures such as Marc Chagall, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Jim Morrison, creators who defied norms and whose reach continues across generations.

"I am drawn to artists whose work lasted well beyond their initial appearance," Polins said. "Through dense layering, I aim to produce pieces that unfold gradually, much like memory. This approach keeps past voices, energy, and meaning accessible to new viewers."

While many recognize Polins through his role as Managing Partner of Tampa-based HCP Associates, his artwork displays a more reflective perspective, weaving themes of nostalgia, identity, fading Americana, music culture, memory, and the flow of time into emotionally rich visual accounts.

Outside his professional work, Polins has long supported arts, education, and nonprofit groups across the Tampa Bay area. Through HCP Associates, the marketing communications firm he co-owns, he has supplied creative services, strategic advice, volunteer leadership, and storytelling assistance to many community organizations, including Voices for Children of Tampa Bay, Guardian ad Litem, Tampa Theatre, Project Focus, the Gasparilla International Film Festival, and additional nonprofit and civic efforts.

One project especially meaningful to him was producing the award-winning documentary Tibet: The Story of Florida's First Courthouse Facility Dog, which raised awareness for an innovative program aiding abused, neglected, and abandoned children in Florida's dependency court system. The film showcased the vital role courthouse facility dogs play in offering comfort to children during some of their hardest moments, underscoring Polins' view that storytelling can drive compassion, understanding, and meaningful change.

"Storytelling has always meant more than marketing to me," Polins said. "Whether assisting a nonprofit with awareness, supporting the arts, preserving a key story through film, or building something meaningful through my artwork, I have always held that creativity can connect people, honor human experience, and create real impact in lives."

Unlike standard juried events, The People's Artist is decided solely by public voting, allowing supporters a direct say in the result. For Polins, each vote can do more than honor an artist; it can help deliver a $25,000 gift to an organization focused on delivering creativity, art, music, film, and storytelling to people facing emotional and medical challenges.

Presented nationally through Colossal in partnership with actor and artist Johnny Depp, The People's Artist competition backs The Art of Elysium, a nonprofit devoted to providing creative expression and healing through the arts to individuals confronting serious illness, trauma, and hardship.

To learn more or support Eric Polins in The People's Artist competition, visit his profile page or review his full artist portfolio.

SOURCE Eric Polins