Guy Hepner Gallery

Eric Stefanski The One You Love For Sale

Eric Stefanski
Eric Stefanski - The One You Love, 2025, Charcoal on canvas

The One You Love, 2025

Charcoal on canvas

16 x 20 in 40.6 x 50.8 cm

About this work

Eric Stefanski's "The One You Love" presents the titular phrase rendered in his characteristic hand-painted text, the charcoal medium lending an intimate, almost confessional quality to the declaration. The words emerge from the canvas with a raw immediacy, each letter carrying the slight imperfections and gestural weight of the artist's hand. Against the neutral ground, the phrase hovers between statement and question, between presence and absence—an utterance that feels simultaneously tender and haunting. The choice of charcoal marks a subtle departure within Stefanski's practice, trading the density of his acrylic work for something more vulnerable and ephemeral. The medium's natural softness creates edges that seem to breathe, letters that threaten to smudge or fade, mirroring the fragility inherent in the sentiment itself. There is an unfinished quality here, as though the words were spoken in a moment of unguarded honesty and captured before they could be taken back. Stefanski has built his practice around the understanding that language carries emotional residue—that certain phrases become vessels for accumulated feeling, worn smooth by repetition yet never emptied of meaning. "The One You Love" taps into this reservoir, offering viewers a mirror for their own associations. The work refuses to specify its subject, leaving space for longing, devotion, loss, or quiet recognition. It functions as both portrait and prompt, depicting no one while potentially evoking everyone. For inquiries regarding acquisition of this work, please contact Guy Hepner gallery in New York.

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Edition & Provenance

Year
2025
Medium
Charcoal on canvas
The One You Love

About Eric Stefanski

Eric Stefanski is a Chicago based artist known for large scale abstract paintings that incorporate bold, handwritten text. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and earned his MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2015.

Stefanski's work merges expressive mark making with direct, often humorous or self-deprecating phrases, using language as a way into larger themes around vulnerability, failure, and the pressures of maintaining a creative practice. His large-scale canvases favor vibrant color and bold lettering, with text functioning less as slogan and more as fragments of internal dialogue, blending humor with genuine emotional weight. Through this approach, Stefanski examines what it means to sustain a life as a working artist, treating uncertainty and contradiction as part of the process rather than something to resolve.

His work has been shown extensively in Chicago and Boston, along with solo exhibitions in cities including Tokyo and Madrid, and has continued to expand into galleries and institutions internationally.

He continues to live and work in Chicago.

Guy Hepner works with collectors seeking Eric Stefanski's bold, text-driven abstract paintings. Contact us to discuss available inventory or to inquire about upcoming releases.

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