Paintings
75 works
Eric Stefanski Trying Crying For Sale
Eric Stefanski
Trying Crying, 2026
Acrylic on canvas
60 x 48 in 152.4 x 121.9 cm
About this work
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.
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Edition & Provenance
- Year
- 2026
- Medium
- Acrylic on canvas
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.