Eric Stotik

For his latest exhibition, Eric Stotik has spent the past two years creating a continuous painting that is 5 feet high and 45 feet long. The painting consists of 11 panels that connect to one another almost seamlessly and present a vast array of imagery both beautiful and terrifying. If brought together, end-to-end, the piece would have no starting or stopping point, functioning as an unending, dreamlike narrative. Incorporating human and animal figures in natural and manmade settings that compel further investigation. Stotik’s work probes a darker side of the human psyche, aiming for, as the artist says, “insight with a gasp.” The opportunity to make this painting arose, in part, from a Fellowship that Stotik received from the Regional Arts & Culture Council in 2011. The award allowed the artist more time and opportunity to develop a painting that will truly captivate those who see it. In addition to the continuous painting, Stotik is also including a selection of smaller individual works in this exhibition.

Eric Stotik grew up between Papua, New Guinea and Melbourne, Australia. As an adult, he came to Portland to study art at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, where he graduated in 1985. He won the prestigious Betty Bowen Memorial Award in 1994 and was Artist in Residence at the Vivian and Gordon Gilkey Center for the Graphic Arts, Portland Art Museum in 1997. He was named the Regional Arts & Culture Council’s 2011 Fellow in Visual Arts. He has shown his work extensively throughout the Northwest, and his work is included in the collections of the Hallie Ford Museum at Willamette University, Salem; the Portland Art Museum; the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah; Idaho State University; the New York Public Library; and Yale University.

New Work

September 5 – 28, 2013

Press Release