Eric Diehl

Prints Available By Eric Diehl

Eric Diehl, originally from Lancaster, PA, received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and BFA from Pratt Institute. He is the recipient of two Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grants and has shown his work throughout the United States. Diehl’s first solo exhibition “Neighborhood Watch” opened at the McKinley Arts and Culture Center in Reno, NV, in 2018. Past projects include “Auto-Paint, USA” a Kickstarter-funded cross-country painting journey exhibited at “The Local Tourist”(Los Angeles, CA) and “The Montauk Club”(Brooklyn, NY). Diehl has attended a handful of residencies including Mildred’s Lane (Pennsylvania) and Brush Creek Ranch (Wyoming). Bibliography includes New American Paintings, issue #118. Diehl lives and works in Beacon, NY.

You can see more of Eric's work at his personal website, ericdiehlpaintings.com/paintings

My work explores Deep Geological Time and the sacred moments found in even the most banal suburban design. Through hallucinatory landscapes of the US American West I cross-reference painting and cinema, interweaving my own video screenshots into paint and copper to investigate the present state of the constantly-shifting boundaries of the middle class in the USA.

Television plays a part in my work as a means to tap into the psychological static holiness of the desert landscape, and I use certain techniques to mimic the optical effects of the TV screen. Voyeuristic shots explore familiar neighborhoods implicating the viewer, and lending a fetishistic unease to picturesque front lawns and driveways. The atomized atmosphere recalls a specific light seen during heat waves as well as allergy season.

The denial of a class structure in the USA fascinates me, but you can observe and dissect class through someone’s aesthetic choices - style of home, choice of vehicle, fashions. Suburban design most intrigues me, because you have a very broad range from high to low living in seemingly similar places, yet with fundamental, if sometimes subtle, discrepancies. This is what I’m pointing out.