NEW AMERICAN PAINTINGS. The MFA Annual, 2002

'Toy One' by Eric Strenger
"This painting is full of images from a smaller painting that I did. I wanted to push myself as an artist with this painting. I have never made a piece based on another piece or used another painting as my sketch. In the end, it was challenging. I pushed and pulled, worked and reworked. At first I tried to make a larger version of the small painting. Later, I realized that this wasn't the proper way to execute the piece. I eventually put the smaller version away and continued painting large, as if I never painted the image before."