A Personal History of Emergence
ESSAY
The radical shift in perspective that was allowed during self-quarantine periods of the Covid era (of which some still participate), was a boon to the creative class. Among these was the painter Eric Sanders, who used this “time-out” period to manifest a range of divergent creative approaches that expanded his oeuvre. One of these advances was his series “That’s Not Snow…It’s Ash” which comprised several large abstract canvases, some of them straight references to Abstract Expressionism, and others a translucent abstraction layered over images of the artist’s own self-portrait. This series was completed so as to address the sense of urgency and yes, of emergency, which characterized creative efforts in the past few years. Yet art has always responded to changes in society, even if the evidence required was not overtly placed in the images themselves. The urgency was there, and the sense of agency prevailed. In these paintings we have proof of the vital forces that could not be subdued.
Sanders’ abstractions are grand, as in the style of the abstract legacy from which they draw. In order to show not only the potency and eventfulness of the experience, but to interact viscerally with the viewer, it is important to manifest every possible dimension of the experience—the reception of forces from both within and without—that can then be successfully dramatized and properly memorable. Rupture and transcendence are integral aspects of this oeuvre. Sanders emphasizes both, alternately between canvases as well as simultaneously. It’s his ability to do this, that makes the full series so impressive.
There are three distinct groupings to his work from this interval, which are broken into the periods of 2020, 2021, and 2022. Each year of the crisis interval was to some degree not only a forced education in the recognition of how historical and cultural forces can overwhelm the normal expectations of everyday life, but also how the conditional restraints of self-quarantine and lock down coupled with the percussive psychic threat of protests, of resistance of inherent duty in our leaders, and the accumulated stupidity leading to communal damage on the part of the citizenry, leads to states of repression so advanced that we must seek out extreme methods of expressing such consequences. For Sanders that has meant an extended creative effort that at first dives directly into large, gesturally violent images upon large canvases, resembling perhaps through no specific intent on Sanders’ part, the expressive potency of a Jackson Pollock or the moody iconology of a Franz Kline work. Without meaning to, Sanders has traversed similar metaphysical territory, broaching a similar sense of urgency through images of abstract power.
The works of 2020 are by and large suggestive of a radical shift in expectation, or a rupture that Sanders manifests as formal and symbolic, the presentation of a sequence of complex images in which happiness and peace are torn asunder, in which a blue sky filled with fleecy clouds reveals a void of endless blue, and the rupture itself ringed with dark winged birds or angels, trailing blood in their wake. One must read deeply into Sanders’ imagery to find a narrative, but it is there. The second painting takes us further into a dark world: a scene suffused with redness, the red of flesh and blood, of the human viscera and at the same time, the red of danger. Fluttering around this endless redness are several gestural flourishes that are mostly in pale tones, little movements of hope, or signs of life, in the middle of a void of foreboding. Slightly hidden by the flourishes are what resemble trails of animals or a secret language of indecipherable glyphs, the literal depiction of “the writing on the wall” of harbingers of meaning yet to come. The third painting plays a game of competing scribbles, splashes, and washes of different colors on a dark background. This is chaos, but it’s chaos suggestive of the varieties and idiosyncrasies of different groups as they move across the world and through time. There’s no innate structure, as they are all caught up in a struggle that requires they stay separate to avoid contamination. Each has a vibrancy of their own, and a motion and vitality that will not be denied. The fourth and final painting of 2020 not only makes the boldest statement yet but also swings into 2021 with a vengeance, matching the intensity of later correlating works as well as a similar structure tethered to the intensity of the time itself. They Told Me You Were Harmless is named after the click in the artist’s mind when he finds out that Covid is truly the existential threat the news of which was never quite disposed in final terms before. One news cycle changes everything. A large vertical canvas filled with what can only be described as a fast moving storm system, the so-called perfect storm that takes over and dominates all contexts, threatening to overtake each individual person in their daily life; of course it also resembles a large Rorschach, a symbol of implied meaning that can never be completely made clear.
In 2021, there was a shift in tone and construction. Works such as Brute Force and The Cowardly Forty-Three leap off from where the works of the previous year first tread. These works represent the culmination of Sanders’ abstract progression, of his instinctively abstract interval; from this point forward he uses it differently. Perhaps he felt that the pure abstraction had become repetitive, and that he was no longer as present in the work as he wanted to be. Yet they embody the height of the arc of his formal intent. If I had a title for these works I would call them the “eye of the storm” paintings, for each one depicts a true and utter threat, or rupture, that emerges out of the very ether and transforms into a spiritual dybbuk, or a conflagration of forces that one hopes will stay harmlessly on the horizon, but which protests in the streets, or wildfires moving quickly from one community to another, or rumors that begin with tweets and end with the invasion of sacred spaces, create a tension that explodes in the same way that these painting each do.
But symbolism and force in art is similar to the same influences in life, and a diet of emotional violence leads to a hunger for peace and reflection. In 2022, Sanders applied the dynamics of abstraction as a lattice of translucent scrims over the image of his own face, seen as if through a computer based camera for a Zoom meeting. Gone are the ruptures, the desperate flourishes, and the perfect storms. We are met with a thoughtful and contemplative fusing of abstraction with the reality of self-evidence. The four in a series of “Self-Portrait” paintings depict Eric Sanders facing the viewer as if he were framed by the aperture of a camera of a Zoom meeting video. This is perhaps not the only context in which we could imagine a scenario in which the image of the artist might be required in order to manifest a sense of presence, but for the times we are in, it’s not only an apt metaphor but one that’s true to life. View the face of the artist as he gazes outward, an oblique vessel for all sort of unseen emotions that are painted over him as if in the very air. They swirl about him until the face of the artist merges with the marks resembling vapors all around him. One could imagine that these are the myriad ruptures and storms that previously dominated, now fading into gossamer threads, now enveloping him In an endless mist. It’s abstract reality in a more normative phase, changing how we see ourselves, but evolving cyclically, like the turn of the earth around the sun. We may become temporarily obscured but we then emerge, fully recognizable once again. Eric Sanders has, in this diverse and fanciful body of work, traced the evolution of all our lives through the forest of crisis, and into a history of emergence with all its possibilities intact.
“Eric Sanders: A Painter on Fire” is curated by Peter Frank at the Mary G Hardin Center for Cultural Arts, 501 Broad Street, Gadsden, Alabama, August 16 - December 31, 2023.
DAVID GIBSON is a freelance writer in the arts. He is available to write essays for monographs, exhibition catalogs, text for web sites, grant and residency applications, and to provide critical thinking in matters of portfolio development, studio practice, and professional etiquette. He can be contacted at davidgibsonwriting@gmail.com