Eric Rottcher is a mixed media collage artist living and working in Silver Spring, Maryland. Raised in the rural town of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, Rottcher developed his artistic voice outside the traditional gallery system—shaped by distance, disruption, and a deep engagement with philosophical inquiry. He earned a BA in Art from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania in 2011, where he concentrated in Aesthetics, a foundation that continues to inform his practice.
Influenced by Absurdist and Existentialist thought, his visual language blends Neo-Expressionism, Pop Surrealism, Lowbrow, and Dadaist impulses. Recurring motifs—party hats, Greek busts, birds, wilted flowers, anatomical fragments—create a visual lexicon that feels at once symbolic, hinting at meaning without fully surrendering to it.
Rottcher works with collage, décollage, paint, and found materials to create pieces that embrace layering, erasure, and visible revision. He resists clean resolutions and favors emotional disruption, letting the raw process remain visible on the surface. His compositions are not built for answers, but for agitation—for that uncertain space between celebration and collapse.
His work has been exhibited nationally in both solo and group shows and is held in private collections throughout the U.S. and internationally. His current series, After Party, examines a life of addiction, the seduction of excess, and the emotional fallout that lingers after the high fades—what remains when the crowd disappears and the quiet sets in. As an artist, Rottcher is interested in the tension between what’s shown and what’s withheld, using layered materials and fragmented imagery to explore the emotional truths people tend to avoid.
©EricRottcher