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,
This collection holds an incredibly special and poignant place in my heart.
When I began painting in 2012, I would start each piece by meditatively scribbling, painting and collaging abstract "backgrounds", and then examine, turn and ponder each chaotic mess until suddenly a figure, or two, or three, would emerge from the random blobs and swirls. It was like an ink blot test for me, or seeking out shapes in the clouds. Clear personalities would become apparent, relationships between the characters evolved, and each piece would slowly become its own "small story" for me, which I would then develop into a finished painting. One day very early on the name "FaunaFarcycle" [Faw-nuh Fahr-si-kuhl] popped into my head, seemed completely right, and these stories were all I painted for 5 or 6 years. Eventually however, over the past few years, I began to lose my ability to "pull" the stories out of the backgrounds, and as much as I love each and every one of these, and consider them my children, the door to that world of magical expressionism seems, for the moment, to have closed to me. Perhaps this paralleled my son's transition out of childhood, perhaps it was the dark shadow of that political time, I don't know for sure what happened.
I do always try to maintain some of the magic, and the story-telling, of FaunaFarcycle alive in all my current work.
