My work has always teetered between abstraction and futuristic representation offering the viewer a kind of virtual "view-space" that suggests a simulated world. More recently, that suggestion has evolved into a more focused idea in which I delve into the simulation as a means of extracting an experience from it into the physical environment. My intention with this idea is to create large meditative spaces that reflect a virtual experience which leap off the wall to become what is, ultimately, real. It is this distorted interface – the increasingly blurred lines between the physical and the virtual realms - that interests me most.

To do this I use digital animation technology and silkscreen printing, as well as traditional oil painting. By integrating painting and silk-screening techniques, I combine structure with gesture in a way that is both innovative and traditional. My interest in mechanical processes as well as problem solving technical aspects of multiple media – often simultaneously - complements my painting process and fuels my desire to paint lush surfaces that impose a tangible visual experience on the viewer. The open-ended abstract narrative at which my work hints provides multiple directions for the viewer to go. What the individual takes from that experience is largely up to them.

When starting projects I often begin by creating compositions in virtual space. Drawing with a Wacom tablet and using programs such as Modo and Z-brush, these compositions then become the impetus for creating physical interpretations of them. Over time, the buildup of various printed layers, which I then paint back into and over, create a back and forth process that is largely unpredictable and allows me to create interesting abstract spaces in the process.

During this process, I often project my computer models at the desired scale and begin to make drawings by hand. In doing so, I turn various functions on and off in virtual space in order to highlight different visual elements that I want to bring forward. These variables, which go through multiple changes over the course of the painting's development, include things like bending design elements in various ways, changing color schemes and preferences and altering the environmental lighting in and around the models. These variables influence the development of the painting directly. The more linear elements like wire-frame grids, cages, vertices, edges and polygons, influence the drawings, and ultimately, are screen-printed into the painting. When the painted surface begins to coalesce with the rough spatial drawings, I transfer my drawings onto wet media film with various implements to create film positives that I use to burn my stencils. By laying lightfast, waterproof India ink onto clear film and then exposing it to photo emulsion with ultraviolet light I am able to experiment simultaneously with the screen printing process and with many different variables and visual elements. These include things like material physicality, spatial dimension, line width variation, different perspectives, and the layering of multiple films and screens. Although I consider myself primarily a painter, synthesizing painting and silk-screening allows me to activate these painted spaces in a way I have not been able to achieve in one medium alone and I find the dialogue between the mechanical processes of what I am doing and those that are handmade endlessly fascinating.

Eric N. Rue
2011

About the Aritist | Resume | 2009 Brink Award