How did showing in the exhibition impact your career as an artist?
“Fantastic to meet the curator and many people in the Philadelphia area! The Drift series that was exhibited at the Main Line Art Center has been included in five exhibits since that time. One composition is now a part of the permanent collection of the Haegeumgang Theme Museum in South Korea. Four others are in private collections. the Drift series is currently a part of the Possibilities of Paper exhibit at the Troggler Fine Art Center in Newport News through October 2023.”
Artist Statement
A good friend of mine lost his 21 year old son to a tragic incident involving LSD. The void Devlin left in our lives pulled us all closer, while at the same time marking our relationships with the trauma of his absence. The reconciliation of love and loss is not a secular process. There is an intrinsic human impulse to contemplate faith and doubt when confronting mortality.
I have a habitual attraction with filling the empty spaces of my compositions with details. I don’t know if absences are fearfully incomplete to me or if I have a futile need to see evidence of the infinite. I used the connection between these thoughts and Devlin’s death to create Gravity of Absence.
The vulnerability of paper steals my heart as a medium. It seems so unlikely and out of place when cut with the impeccable accuracy of a laser. This relationship supports my compulsive and often irrational thought processes when composing an artwork. Paradoxical cognition for me is the essence of what it is to function as a human being. Applying critical thought to diverse, inseparable contradictions is an act of faith. Accepting the necessity of contradiction as a whole is an act of compassion. Intricacy, infinity and vulnerability are reoccurring themes I use to witness these thoughts in physical forms.
Artist Biography
Eric Standley gave up his dreams of becoming a modernist in favor of maintaining a daily routine of discovery through irrational thought. He sleeps on rare occasions between working in his studio in Blacksburg, VA and contributing his compassionate outlook as an artist and Professor of Studio Art at Virginia Tech. Eric is represented by Eli Bronner of the Charles Moffit Gallery, NY, Dinner Gallery, NY, and Media Force of Tokyo, Japan. He has exhibited in over one hundred and thirty museums and galleries around the world. His artworks are a part of the permanent collections of the Haegeumgang Theme Museum, South Korea, Palace of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, the Scherenschnittmuseum, Vreden, Germany, and The Zupi Collection, São Paulo, Brazil.
