mixed media artist, art, fine art, original art, whimsical art, animal art, imaginative art, unique art, primitive art, art prints, abstract expressionism, abstract expressionist landscapes, abstract art, colorist, colorful art, colorful paintings, Erika Stern art, Massachusetts artist, Massachusetts painter, Massachusetts south shore artist, Massachusetts south shore painter, colorful abstract art, colorful abstract landscape, abstract landscape painting, 

STATEMENT

I wrestle hard and largely unsuccessfully with ADHD, but finding a way to deposit that uncooperative brain energy onto paper or canvas brings me a Peace that I have, as of yet, been unable to attain in any other way. The mess of details in my paintings are pretty much what it feels like inside my head most of the time. I am most comfortable in an environment that is textured and layered, rumpled and earthly and boundless. I like making paintings that don't mind at all if I spill coffee on them, or have to patch a hole that resulted from overly aggressive scraping or sanding. But at the same time, all this chaos somehow makes me anxious, so I am forever trying to categorize things and give them limits and labels, to create narratives from nothing. I'm uncomfortable with the limitlessness of pure abstraction in Art, but quickly bored with literal representationalism. I am very interested in Ambiguity (in my Art, not in my Life at all). And I am coming to believe, in my middle age, that there is some kind of deep Magic that holds us and the world together, but that it is much greater than most of us can See or Know or Express. Despite that, I want to capture some of the Magic, so I paint small, messy stories; about singular moments, and timeless experiences, and what Life feels like, to try to make sense of it all in my own small way.

I have very little interest in art which doesn't welcome the viewer to frolic without abandon into the painting. Although I spend way too much time inside my own head, my work is more personal than cerebral, and while people don't necessarily describe me as particularly Joyful, most of them find my work to be. Huh.