Eric Stefanski Trying Crying For Sale

Eric Stefanski's "Trying Crying" names a particular emotional experience with the compressed precision characteristic of his practice. The two words—gerunds, both of them, both describing ongoing action—sit together on a 48 by 60 inch canvas and describe the specific effort of allowing grief to surface. The act of trying implies that crying doesn't always come naturally, that sometimes feeling must be worked toward, coaxed. Stefanski's hand-rendered text transforms this interior state into a physical object, giving it scale and permanence. The painting acknowledges the labor of emotional life without sentimentalizing it. There is dignity in the trying, in the recognition that processing feeling is not passive but active—something a person does rather than simply undergoes. The work belongs to Stefanski's Painted Confessions series, a body of work that treats language as the rawest available material. "Trying Crying" is among its most quietly powerful entries: two words that name an experience almost everyone has had and almost no one has said out loud. For inquiries, please contact Guy Hepner gallery in New York.