House of gnats Print

I have always been a creative for as long as I remember. Today, I am an abstract painter, musician and songwriter as well as a professional graphic designer. I grew up as an outsider kid in places like Boca Raton, Florida as someone that didn't fit in with all the cool kids. I found myself drawing and playing my dad's old electric Sears guitar. I was happier in my own world. I started painting in my early thirties with no instruction. One night, my wife and I were hosting a dinner party at our new townhouse and didn't have any art on the walls. We went to a resale center and I found a big framed canvas print and painted over it, quickly creating something that I could hang over the couch. After living with it for a while, I realized that I should try this again...and, again. It became an obsession. Abstract art became more difficult, the more I tried and the more I studied painters like Rothko, Twombly and Richter. Today, after hundreds of paintings completed with nearly a hundred sold, I realize that I will paint until I am unable to. It's a lifetime journey. Daunting, and sometimes completely frustrating, I wend my way back to the blank surface to see what awaits. Eric Guenette is an American painter currently living in Portugal. He primarily utilizes common household paints and materials to create abstract works such as Latex house paint, spray paint; simple wood for structural decorative framing and canvas and fiberboard for surface materials. His paint application utilizes small pieces of cut framing wood or recycled plastic used as scrapers and rarely applied with brushes. The work has an intentionally rough, imperfect and organic feel all the way through his process. One of his biggest artistic influences was his grandfather Marcel, who was a golf shoe maker at Footjoy in Brockton, Massachusetts for thirty years. "He could build anything with his hands. He would often be found in his small wood shop behind his house in Winter Park, Florida, toiling in the central Florida heat creating, fixing and repairing all sorts of things. One day, he ripped apart a lawnmower and created at go-cart with random pieces of wood for my sister and I to play with. His spirit inspires me to this day. This is why it is important to to me to be involved in every aspect of the artwork, from the construction of the homemade frames, stretching house painter drip cloths as canvas material and finishing most of the artworks with white pine decorative framing.