Eric Stotik
Eric Stotik returns to the gallery with three bodies of work in painting. The show title SomeWhen refers to the micro-script “Somewhere, Some When” by Robert Walser, in which the writer describes a woman both clever and beautiful, woefully surrounded by second-rate men. In this exhibition, the artist presents 20 portraits of women, of different ages, races, and phases of life. As with most of Stotik’s work, the subjects are powerful and intense, seemingly timeless, as if from another nameless era. The artist has also continued his work on Airgas tags, detritus he finds while walking along the Columbia River. These found pieces of paper feature haunting portraits. And finally, there is a small group of paintings which feature what the artist calls “double encounters” of two figures meeting.
Stotik presents small, intimate paintings that raise questions about identity, loss, interconnection and the human condition. Stotik’s paintings combine breathtaking technique and skill to create jewel-like works that can evoke the devastation an apocalyptic time, or exude a sense of primal peace or solitude, moving viewers from one pole of experience to another.