Tampa artist, filmmaker, and storyteller pledges entire grand prize to charity while bringing a decades-long body of work into the public spotlight through Johnny Depp’s nationwide art competition.

TAMPA, Fla., June 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — For more than three decades, Eric Polins helped shape how others were seen.

As a filmmaker, journalist, branding strategist, and storyteller, the Tampa Bay creative built a career developing campaigns, films, narratives, and public identities for companies, nonprofits, executives, and communities across the country. But behind the client work and public-facing career, Polins was quietly building something far more personal: a layered body of mixed-media artwork exploring nostalgia, memory, music, mortality, Americana, and the emotional fragments people carry through life.

Now, through Johnny Depp’s nationwide The People’s Artist competition supporting The Art of Elysium, Polins is publicly sharing that work in a way he never has before.

At the same time, he has announced that should voters select him as the winner of The People’s Artist, he intends to donate the entire $25,000 grand prize to The Art of Elysium, the nonprofit organization supported by the competition.

“The visibility would allow me to bring this work to larger audiences, galleries, and collectors,” Polins said. “I’ve spent decades building this body of work quietly. At this stage in my life, the opportunity to finally put it into the world without hesitation means more to me than the prize money itself. If supporters help me win, I want the entire $25,000 award to go back to the mission behind the competition.”

Raised by an engineer father and an illustrator mother, Polins says his creative identity was shaped equally by structure and imagination. After losing his father at age 17 and his mother four years ago, themes of memory, time, legacy, and emotional permanence became deeply embedded in both his life and his artwork.

“I think I’ve tried to live each day like it was my last since losing my dad as a teenager,” Polins said. “A lot of my work is about preserving moments, energy, influence, and emotion before they disappear. Art became a way to hold onto things that time eventually tries to erase.”

Polins creates layered mixed-media works that combine original illustration, line art, acrylic painting, typography, photography, and hand-cut fragments of vintage imagery. Through carefully curated cultural references, he creates visual narratives that bridge generations through music, film, memory, and shared emotional experience.

“Incorporating organic, found, and tactile elements, often finished with resin, each piece becomes a kind of time capsule,” Polins said. “They honor influence, legacy, and the stories that shaped us.”

His work is influenced by artists and cultural voices such as Marc Chagall, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Jim Morrison; creators who challenged convention and whose impact continues to echo across generations.

“I’m drawn to artists whose work endured long after the moment they first appeared,” Polins said. “Through dense layering, I try to create pieces that reveal more over time, almost like memory itself. That process keeps past voices, energy, and meaning alive for new audiences.”

While many know Polins professionally through his role as Managing Partner of Tampa-based HCP Associates, his artwork reveals a far more introspective side, blending themes of nostalgia, identity, lost Americana, music culture, memory, and the passage of time into emotionally layered visual storytelling.

Beyond his professional career, Polins has spent decades supporting arts, education, and nonprofit organizations throughout the Tampa Bay region. Through HCP Associates, the marketing communications firm he co-owns, he has contributed creative services, strategic counsel, volunteer leadership, and storytelling support to numerous community organizations, including Voices for Children of Tampa Bay, Guardian ad Litem, Tampa Theatre, Project Focus, the Gasparilla International Film Festival, and many other nonprofit and civic initiatives.

Among the projects closest to his heart was producing the award-winning documentary Tibet: The Story of Florida’s First Courthouse Facility Dog, which helped raise awareness for a groundbreaking program supporting abused, neglected, and abandoned children navigating Florida’s dependency court system. The film highlighted the remarkable role courthouse facility dogs play in providing comfort and emotional support to children facing some of the most difficult moments of their lives, reinforcing Polins’ belief that storytelling can be a powerful force for compassion, understanding, and positive change.

“Storytelling has always been about more than marketing for me,” Polins said. “Whether it’s helping a nonprofit raise awareness, supporting the arts, preserving an important story through film, or creating something meaningful through my artwork, I’ve always believed creativity has the power to connect people, honor the human experience, and make a real difference in people’s lives.”

Unlike traditional juried competitions, The People’s Artist is determined entirely by public voting, giving supporters a direct role in the outcome. For Polins, every vote has the potential to do more than recognize an artist, it can help generate a $25,000 contribution to an organization dedicated to bringing creativity, art, music, film, and storytelling to individuals facing emotional and medical hardship.

Presented nationally through Colossal in partnership with actor and artist Johnny Depp, The People’s Artist competition supports The Art of Elysium, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing creative expression and healing through the arts to individuals facing serious illness, trauma, and adversity.

To learn more or support Eric Polins in The People’s Artist competition, visit:

The People’s Artist Profile:
https://peoplesartist.org/2026/eric-polins-A9rd

Full Artist Portfolio:
https://www.singulart.com/en/artist/eric-polins-59097

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SOURCE Eric Polins