Today we’d like to introduce you to Eric Standley.

Hi Eric, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Cruelty always surprised me when I was a kid, especially when I was accused of it. There seemed to be an assumption that I intentionally disrupted things when really I was just manic and unaware. I loved organizing games in the neighborhood or getting everyone to draw, but it was in the moments of solitude that I developed a conceptual curiosity that informed my artistic career. There were miracles happening everywhere without notice, like how tadpoles could live in the rainwater that filled the bottom of a wheel barrel, or how a tree grew around an abandoned section of a chain-link fence. I made up histories about how these things might have happened, the adversity, the violence, and the striking endurance of life. I could recreate the sentiment of these micro mythologies in the organization of made-up competitive games with other kids, in my drawings, and in the things I built using wood, found objects and simple tools.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There was a road? Must have missed the signs for that. I am the greatest obstacle to the practicalities of my own existence. Struggle required. There were two experiences that changed my trajectory as an artist: 1. The abandonment of paint as a medium and 2. The acceptance of faith and doubt as a spiritual dichotomy.

I am a failed painter. By the time I was studying art, painting was a closing frontier where so much had already played out that it was difficult to find originality. I leaned into traditional techniques because that was open at the time and I had the capacity for it, but the limitations that pictural images presented me was disappointing and not quite where I wanted to go. Looking back, this was around the time that Superflat in Japan set the stage for Magic Realism in the west, which I love! My path was different, and I’m grateful for it. In graduate school I painstakingly painted traditionally glazed paintings that were then cut and sewn into bedroom slippers. For my thesis show I rented a retail space and opened a mock shoe store called “Underfoot” to display my paintings/slippers. Those were good times!

I worked for the painter Armenius Mazakanaian shortly after getting my BFA at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. He was Armenian artist who studied Soviet Realism in St. Petersburg before defecting to Italy, moving to Germany, and eventually setting up his art practice in the United States. I ground Armenius’s paint, helped him source quality mediums, washed pallets, and was his figure model for drawings and studies depicting Jesus. He belonged to the Armenian Apostolic Church, and his faith was equally interesting as it was condemning to me. On one hand he fully blended his spiritual conviction with his artistic practice. He was an infallibly dedicated artist and Christian. At other times he was bitterly dismissive of thoughts and ideas that in any way apposed his conservatively Apostolic viewpoints. He was not joking when he called me a heretic, and accused me of having “a lack spiritual discipline” which was laughably accurate at the time, but eventually sparked my interests in theology, philosophy and sociology.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I believe paradoxical cognition is a uniquely human function that can be represented poetically without language, symbols or pictures. Hang with me – anything can be an archetype, but for me, building a pattern that is derived from a particular contradiction or paradox is like seeing an object that causes déjà vu. I am deep in the realm of subjectivity when I am composing artwork, acting somewhere between preservation and determination, and guided by my own faith and doubt.

I draw compositions in my sketchbooks and work out how different layers might occupy space. I redraw certain compositions that I want to take further in vector-based software using a gaming mouse where I can elaborate on how a particular paradox might be captured. Each layer is cut into colored archival paper with a laser, and assembled by hand. Specific patterns and colors are extended onto the walls to provide a flat-spaced atmosphere where the work can breathe. I am interested in the process exchange between ephemerality and physicality as it is reflected in the transitions between second and third dimensions.

How do you define success?
That I may live as I choose, and to a calling that might be interpreted as a form of compassion. My measure is happiness. My guidance is in the joyfulness of the people that I love. I consider it a success if I can have one more day to bring some kind of poetic archetype into the world.

Pricing:

• I have no mind for business but thankfully my galleries do! The sacrifices I make in order to live a life of purpose and creativity has a price: The former is what I pay, the latter is what I receive. At a zero sum, my family and I can exist on what we need in order to live up to our individual potentials on this planet. Anything more is monstrous.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.eric-standley.com
• Instagram: @eric.standley
• Facebook: eric.standley