Drawings, January-May 2021

By Jennifer Chanda Orozco

In my evenings with Eric, with the encouragement of Eric’s son Rolf, we settled into a routine of drawing together after dinner time. With a stack of blank paper and a wooden cigar box color-filled with Eric’s water coloring crayons between us, we would set to our respective pages while the music from Eric’s cd collection drifted in the air-Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, and Beethoven were in heavy rotation.

What was immediately evident was the ease with which Eric handled any drawing tool-during a time when handling eating utensils was becoming more difficult.

With a steady hand, Eric set the tool to page without hesitation, his assured hand and mind in perfect symbiosis. Eric rarely spoke as we drew, his focus devoted to the pages coming alive beneath his twinkling eyes. The quiet between us interrupted only by the satisfying low clacking of the watercolor crayons as Eric’s hand searched unlooking for the elusive hue that his fingers would assuredly soon find.

There was an inspiring freedom to Eric’s drawing during those evenings; untroubled and clear in committing the fanciful creatures from his imagination to paper. His drawings were always playful, down to the composition itself where a previously amorphous shape could become a delightful tangle of an elephant, a monkey, a bird, and a self portrait for good measure. 

Some evenings, Eric would create multiple pieces in quick succession and when he decided he’d drawn enough, we’d continue to sit and talk. Though memories were at times elusive, his drawing sessions seemed to prop the door open to better retrieve those recollections. He would often share his reminiscences; his humor and playfulness evident in his twinkling eyes as he regaled us with stories of his youth with his cousin Fritz, as an art school student in Stuttgart, to his time in advertising in New York City.

When words became clumsy and inefficient, it was his art that anchored Eric and allowed him to articulate himself in the language he knew best.