Eric Stotik's paintings may seem narrative-based, but, he says, "the painting is just the painting."

by LISA LAMBERT
243-2122 ext 313

Writers love Eric Stotik. Certainly art critics do, as those plying the craft locally have heaped paragraphs of praise on his talents. Perhaps, as the storytellers of art, critics relate to the narrative quality of Stotik's paintings. Or maybe it's just that writing about good realist paintings is a refreshing break from writing about good nonrepresentational paintings (it's sometimes hard to explain why fat orange stains in the center of canvases evoke God). Stotik's paintings are like beautiful tarot cards that tell the darkest tales of humanity. Stotik met up with Willamette Week at PDX to discuss his work.

Willamette Week: Your work has been described as "Northern Renaissance realism combined with proto-perspective space," as "grotesques reminiscent of George Grosz," as "surrealist" and as "mythic."

Eric Stotik: It's Traditional. It's not really informed by any art history per se. I mean, I understand the intellectual arguments of how modern art came to be and what its progress was, but I can't really buy it. I'm more interested in traditional ideas about art. I think part of traditional art's goal is the nourishment of the people. That's my goal.

When I first looked at these paintings, I wanted to impose narratives on each--give the people identities and give the scenarios plots. But most of the stories I created didn't fit. Are there specific narratives to these works?

I think they seem narrative-based because they have representational objects, but I don't see them that way. I see them as straightforward. There's no other dynamic behind them. The triptych with the two fellows is of the inventors of the lobotomy. But the painting is just the painting. The reason I made it was after reading the book Great and Desperate Cures,
I read in Willamette Week about a child who had a lobotomy and died at OHSU. It's sort of a tribute to him.

It struck me that you had to take a lot of time planning these paintings; they're very detailed and carefully rendered. What are the first steps in your process?

I prepare different pieces of paper or wood and they sit until I want to paint. It's really organic--meaning it's really passive. Once I have the idea, I just execute it. I don't do drawings. I just start painting.

In his farewell article, The Oregonian's D.K. Row identified you as a member of a core group of young artists keeping Portland's art scene alive.

I don't really feel like I'm one of the young artists any more, not because I feel old, but I don't think I represent young artists. I'm just struggling to be relevant--trying to make meaning. Sometimes the scene just seems like an interior-decorating industry. I suspect it's pretty healthy, but I don't know. For one thing, so many artists work in isolation, it's hard to tell how everyone is connected. I don't really feel like I have an idea of what the art world here is. Who are all the people? If it had a shape, what shape would it be? I don't think I could answer that.