Bio & From the Artist

Earle Rock, MFA.

Earle grew up in Eastern Iowa. From an early age creativity was a central theme. Some of his earliest toys, such as: kaleidoscopes, Lite-Brite, and Paint by Number sets became influences as he matured into an independent artist.

The 1970's and 80's saw the explosion of pop culture and the growing accessibility of new forms of media. This phenomenon of culture's expanded influence would also shape later artistic expressions.

After a brief stint in manufacturing, Earle broke with his home town and began his journey into academia. In the early 1990's an invitation from a mentor to come east for a summer saw academic pursuits put on hold as a summer turned into 10 years.

During the 1990's and early 2000's Earle explored entrepreneurial endeavors, achieving success in a business led him to realize that deeper expressions of creativity were waiting.

A trip to Italy in 2001 refocused Earle. He returned to the college that he left a decade before and earned his BFA in drawing. After graduating and another stint of entrepreneurship, the desire to find an even deeper level of creativity would once again see Earle return to academia.

Iowa State University was the location for his pursuit of an MFA. Immediately after earning his MFA from ISU, Earle returned to Pennsylvania. With its centrality to NYC, D.C. Baltimore, Philly and Pittsburgh, central PA was uniquely positioned for Earle to launch his direct to client print sales, and commission portrait art business. Earle participates in juried exhibitions and has won awards for both his 2-D & 3-D works. In 2023 The Devil, The Doctor, The Deliverer was the center piece of a group exhibition in a Lower East Side Manhattan gallery. Prints of this excellent piece, along other select paintings are available in the Store.

From the Artist

“Why is Light a central theme in your paintings?”

"I was recently asked this question. It’s bluntness reverberated.

The rebounding answer is that a profound connection to light is my first memory, apart from family. It was the first time I knew that I existed. I remember a day when, being carried by my father, the light from the setting Sun filled my face. I tried to keep my eyes open as wide as possible so as to experience as much as I could bare. That Light. That Color. This was The Always!

Oh, I was a happy child.

I was born with Cerebral Palsy but didn’t know this experience was different. I thought surgeries to make one’s legs move were common. So, I endured. Besides, The Always is Benevolence.

I was a happy child, until I wasn’t.

Dyslexia compounded the difficulties of my early public education experience. So 'special classes' were deemed necessary. Painful surgeries, wheelchairs, leg braces and now this? Forgetting my status as 'other than', 'less than' was not an option.

Through years of diligence, I learned to move without assistance and I retrained my brain to unsrcmalbe nubmres and l3tt3rs.

Then came another, more insidious challenge. The public discourse of the American Bible belt during the 1970’s & 80’s was dominated by a single message: 'God HATES fags!'

Darkness…

After two plus decades of poisonous hatred, there was little that motivated me. In a moment of grace, a friend gave me his SLR film camera. The exploration was compulsory and immediate. The next three years were spent capturing temporal moments of light.

The Always had not forsaken me!

A further moment of alignment came when another friend commissioned me to do a painting. What did I know of painting? I had never painted. Apart from amateur photography Art was a mere pass time. But I COULD paint!

Looking back over the last 3 decades of dedicated work, navigating through darkness has brought me time and again to my place in creativity.

Every time I paint light, I get closer to that 3 year old boy that instinctively understood that The Always is benevolence."