About the Artist: Eric Wieringa

Eric Wieringa (b. 1979, Grand Rapids, MI) is an award-winning American painter whose meticulous realism is imbued with a strong narrative sensibility. After earning a B.S. in painting and illustration from Indiana Wesleyan University in 2003, he supported his creative habit through a variety of jobs until entering the MFA program at the University of Hartford in 2008. Following a successful tenure teaching in higher education, Eric returned to Hastings, MI, where he now maintains a full-time studio practice while enjoying life with his three daughters. His paintings have appeared in American Illustration, Poets & Artists Magazine, and Creative Quarterly, - with works in galleries and private collections across the United States. Eric's current body of work centers on simple objects and figures that act as vessels for memory and story, balancing precise, lifelike detail with moments of expressive freedom.  

In recent pieces – a carefully rendered bird poised against an abstracted background, for example – he plays with the tension between realism and expressionism to give his subjects a palpable sense of presence and weight.

Through his ongoing narrative series, Eric explores how commonplace items – a weathered brush, a vintage top, a half-lit candle – can hold echoes of human experience and draw viewers into a deeper conversation about identity, loss, and hope. His work seeks to uncover timeless stories in temporal things, inviting a sense of wonder in the everyday.