Living with Art

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Eric Graham
2006

I recently received my purchase from Jen Bekman's 20x200 project, an 8x10 print of Eric Graham's West Texas gas station, which is now hanging on the wall in the bedroom of my recently re-shuffled Brooklyn railroad apartment. I first learned about Eric's work on Jen's 20x200 blog, which describes her relationships to the artists in the this project as well as her insights into their work. Jen drew a parallel between photography of the American vernacular - things like parking lots, dusty small towns, billboards and gas stations - and Eric's paintings of the same subject matter. She mentioned her love/hate relationship to this type of work, and god knows I am a sucker for this stuff, but also recognize and struggle with the dilemma these subjects present.

Nevertheless, I simply couldn't resist Eric's cool and minimal painting. And as I am headed back to Texas in two days, his vision of romantic empty spaces and fragments of roadside architecture brings some inspiration and longing.