About

Eric Rottcher is an American artist based in Silver Spring, Maryland. He grew up in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, a small town that offered little in the way of an art world but did nothing to discourage the pull he felt toward making things. That pull led him to Shippensburg University, where he earned a BFA in Art and found a program that let him pursue aesthetics as a concentration, giving shape to instincts he had carried for years.

At Shippensburg he studied under sculptor Steve Dolbin, and the experience stuck with him in ways that go beyond technique. It was Dolbin’s way of moving through the world, his understanding of what it genuinely means to commit to being an artist, and the seriousness he brought to the demands of artmaking that left the deepest impression. Rottcher has carried those expectations into his own practice ever since.

After graduation, the path forward closed quickly. A family crisis pulled him back to Waynesboro before he had a chance to find his footing. His mother suffered a brain aneurysm and two strokes, and returning home to help care for her was not a decision so much as a fact. The years that followed were hard. Depression set in, isolation deepened, and a long struggle with addiction took hold. The identity he had been building as an artist went quiet. Studio practice stopped. What had once felt like a clear direction became something harder to name.

The return was gradual and hard-won. Moving to the Washington D.C. and Maryland area eventually opened things back up, connecting him to a wider creative community and giving him room to work again. A chance to visit the studio of Matt Sesow, a DC-based artist whose work Rottcher had admired for years, turned out to be a turning point. Talking with Sesow, asking questions, hearing his unfiltered take on what it actually takes to build a life as an artist, gave Rottcher something he had been missing: the confidence to be the artist he originally set out to be.