Eric Nash: LOST IN DESIRE

LOST IN DESIRE

By Eric Nash

I was born an outsider. I grew up lonely. This was my advantage. I observed – careful, quiet and laconic. The freedom of the road was alluring. The anonymity, the opportunity for a new beginning, the desire for something but I didn’t know what. I took endless photos of the most forlorn places I could find, without people. I felt safe in those places. The abandoned downtowns of Midwest that looked like Edward Hopper paintings. The giant signs on the flat windswept highways that beaconed me forward.

At age 19 I found myself in Galveston and Houston, Texas. A house painter and side kick to my boss, a man obsessed with strip joints and dive bars. We made an odd pair – me a shy and sexually confused boy and him a highly social and devious man driven by ladies and lust. It was a dreamy time filled with yearning and wonder. I came of age. I met real people doing real things. Lonely people like me. People lost in desire but not knowing what to do. I learned to see such beauty and soul in the mundane. Years later my journey drew me to the California desert where I now live - a vast expanse of desire and dreams. I feel at home. These paintings and drawings are visual poems to these feelings and places, the reason I am an artist.