ERIC BLUM
Artist Statement

A statement of this kind usually amounts to an admission of failure. The gap between intent and material effect is too vast. Despite failure, it is a privilege for someone who is moved by desire to be able to perform something possibly resembling the accomplishment of that desire.

My early first impressions go back to the postnatal hospital room where my mother held me up to the window for my waving relatives in the street below. This was soon followed by early infancy in an oxygen tent. When I was two, I saw underwater fires at an amusement park. It is likely that the images I have made as an adult are, in part, an attempt to interpret the atmosphere of these scenes.

I am interested to portray forms as they appear before closer inspection. The potency of so delicate a relationship as the irretrievable glimpse is what compels me to paint what I cannot photograph.  That which is seen from the corner of an eye can lead to uncertain and oddly poetic perceptions…and a desire to grasp at that which cannot be possessed. For my sense, the quality of this desire, like the oxygen tent and the underwater fire, is implosive; a simmering just beneath the surface. This might explain my inclination to infuse imagery within the distorting lens of transparent materials, such as beeswax or resin to produce something tactile and illusory. The approach is largely intuitive, with a preference for semi-abstract, ambiguous forms capable of arousing multiple interpretations. Everything always turns out to be something else.