For the month of February, Russo Lee Gallery presents an exhibition of new work by Eric Stotik. Well-known regionally and nationally as a master painter with a surrealist vision, Stotik explores subjects both dark and mysterious. With nuanced color and meticulous execution, his work reveals worlds within worlds, often examining where nature, man, and culture collide. With this exhibition, he has pursued two paths. In one trajectory, he focuses on a series of paintings on found paper tags, incorporating the wear and discoloration of his surfaces into complex psychological portraits. The other avenue distills his painting process into finely detailed patterns, many of which initially appear abstract, only to reveal subtle subjects of humans, monsters, animals, and nature. The rhythmic quality of these images can lull the viewer into meditation, and then surprise the mind with unexpected discoveries.
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.