Eric Fischl is one of the most influential painters of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Inspired by his own middle-class upbringing on Long Island, Fischl’s provocative  paintings expose the underbelly of  American suburban life while piercing through its veil. Through startling scenes of grief, adolescent sexuality and political malaise, Fischl is committed to expressing what often remains hidden and unspoken behind society’s mores.During his meteoric rise in the 1980s, in an era when art eschewed figuration and the human body, Fischl embraced it… His paintings boldly explore the body in all of its movement, gesture, and form.  By imbuing his large scale canvases with a psychological intensity, Fischl’s work invites us to examine our own relationship with taboos, internal conflict, and complacency.Fischl's paintings, sculptures and drawings have been the subject of numerous solo and major group exhibitions around the world, and his work is represented in major museum collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and MoCA in L.A.  His memoir “Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas” was published by Crown in 2013.A longtime resident of Sag Harbor, Long Island, Eric’s recent venture has been to renovate  and transform a local church into an artist residency, exhibition space and creative center known fittingly as The Church (https://www.thechurchsagharbor.org/).