The concept of eudaimonia, a key term in ancient Greek moral philosophy, can be translated as “happiness”. “flourishing” and occasionally as “well-being.” Virtue ethicists say that a human life devoted solely to the pursuits of physical pleasure and the acquisition of wealth is not eudaimonia, but a “wasted life”. This new body of work from Eric Uhlir, a Washington D.C. based painter, is an exploration of what happens when humanity flourishes.

Eric's current body of work explores abstraction as a primary strategy to discuss the lines between reference and history in an attempt to name and give voice to this conflicted space. Premeditation and spontaneity find equal footing, references are not secret but the condition of the work. Irreverence and crushing absurdity battle amid parables of human and natural history. Or, more succinctly, human beings keep making the same mistakes and perpetuating crisis of our own making. Why and why are we so bad at recognizing change over time – cultural, political and environmental.