Art of the West: A Solo Painting Exhibition by Eric Matranga

I have been drawing and painting all of my life, but never full time until I retired seven years ago. Art has become my life and my disabilities fade away as I work. I try to infuse the energy I feel for place in each painting and many people find healing qualities to the finished works.

Art has always been a process involving the healing of my inner demons. As a young child, the assassination of JFK left society with deep dark questions that were never asked or answered. Our involvement in Viet Nam likewise involved questions that yielded different answers to different constituencies. Watergate continued the degeneration into the polarized mess we find ourselves in today. We have incrementally continued down a path to collective suicide and madness. Art is and has been my refuge from that world.

I choose to paint the landscape as a unifying influence rather than engage in political art that divides. I spent over twenty years engaged in land use analysis and used technical tools to derive answers rooted in hard, objective truth. Nobody wanted to hear the truth. Americans have become obsessed with getting their way regardless of the consequences. Art allows me to step away from that conundrum.

Art allows to me to present my vision in my way. It will never appeal to all and isn’t intended to. I find the dramatic landscapes of the west full of healing qualities and try to capture and portray those qualities in my paintings. The journey never ends and the process keeps me hopeful.