Erik Schlake paints hyper-realistic murals. His latest is on the side of Bad Ass Coffee on Fort Myers Beach. It was a collaboration with three other artists.
“Believe it or not, we were able to paint this mural with me more or less being legally blind,” Schlake said.
Schlake injured both eyes in a fall while painting a mural at a church.
“Last November, I was about 15, 16 feet up on a ladder when the ladder slipped out from under me,” Schlake said. “I didn't just fall 16 feet. The ladder kept hitting the altar on the way down, and every time the ladder hit the altar, it would basically bash my face against the ladder. So, it was four or five times my face got bashed. I broke seven ribs, tore off my bottom lip, lost most of my teeth and ended up with a severe damage to my left eye.”
Although he didn’t know it then, he’d also detached the retina in his right eye, requiring reattachment surgery. The loss of vision required Schlake to learn new ways to paint.
“Now I'm at the point where I think I've kind of adjusted enough where I can find just the right distance away that I can get a little bit of clarity in painting small sections. It's difficult, but I'm kind of learning,” Schlake shared.
Schake isn’t willing to transition to studio art just yet.
“There's something about murals and doing something large scale outdoors that I really, really enjoy,” Schlake said.
Some of his fellow artists are helping him paint while he recovers.
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Deb Lawson was with Schlake at the church when he fell.
“I heard a noise, I turned around and I'm watching him fall,” said Lawson. “To this day, it's in slow motion. It's just in slow motion watching it. I used to be a firefighter, a first responder, but my reaction was not what it normally would have been because there’s a big difference when it's somebody that you care about, that you have a relationship with versus a stranger on the side of the road that you're helping.”
Schlake says he knew it was bad because Lawson’s face was white as a ghost.
In fact, Schlake’s injuries were so massive that the first responders called in a trauma ambulance.
“When the trauma ambulance took him to the hospital, they said, oh, he's too bad, you need to take him to the trauma unit,” Lawson recounted. “And he stayed at the trauma unit for seven days. Meanwhile, Mr. Jokester, as they're rolling him out, he's like, all right, do this, this, this, giving me this whole list of chores before I go to see him.”
In the fall, Schlake suffered severe damage to his left eye.
“That wasn't that bad in the beginning because that was in November and I still had my right eye,” said Schlake. “But about three months ago, I started to lose vision in my right eye pretty much overnight.”
It wasn’t clear initially whether the loss of vision in Schlake’s right eye was age-related or the result of the fall.
“After my retina reattachment surgery, my surgeon said that looking at the amount of scarring and where the injury is, more than likely this was from the accident, and my first thought was, thank God, it means I'm not getting old.”
Schlake is scheduled to have surgery to his left eye soon.
“I have a trauma-induced cataract as well as a couple of other issues,” Schlake noted. “Apparently there's only like two surgeons in the Fort Myers area that can perform that surgery since there's multiple issues, and it really wasn’t an option for me to go to multiple surgeons to have them take care of each issue. So, I’ve just been waiting for an appointment to get into that surgeon.”
The ongoing vision problems placed Schlake in the company of artists like Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Georgia O’Keefe and Rembrandt, who struggled with conditions like retinal degeneration, macular degeneration and other vision problems at various points in their storied careers. In Schlake’s case, he’s had to learn new painting techniques.
“The end result is that it has made my realism even more realistic,” said Schlake. “It kind of forced me in a position to turn back to being the student more and learn new ways to paint.”
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Schlake’s painting style has been influenced by traditional decorative art as well as contemporary street art. He combines various styles in his work, infusing classic painting with elements of trompe l’oeil, grisaille, and other traditional decorative art in an effort to engage and interact with the viewer. It’s a style he often refers to as “modern traditionalist.”
“There is something powerful about changing an entire environment through murals or decorative arts,” said Schlake. ”In creating a new environment, you are not only able to transform the space, but how people view themselves in that space.”
A New York native, Erik did not begin painting until he moved to St Louis at the age of 23. But it wasn’t until he was introduced to various forms of decorative arts, particularly the work of European decorative painters, that he settled on a direction for his fine art.
After moving to Englewood, Erik was involved in several artistic endeavors. As a resident artist at Hermitage Artist Retreat in Englewood, Erik coordinated a project that brought together nine mural artists from all around the country to collaborate and educate. That experience fostered an inner calling that has prompted Schlake to work on small community murals and art projects, including the creation of a mural with six high school-age participants that commemorates the work of Ken Mitchell, a local artist whose work is in the Florida State collection.
Prior to his fall, Schlake regularly participated in street art painting festivals like Sarasota Chalk Festival, Safety Harbor Bloomn’ Chalkfest, Fort Myers ArtFest, Fort Myers Mural Fest, the Lake Worth Street Painting Festival and Marietta Chalktoberfest. He has also participated for a number of years in Naples, Italy’s Corsico di Internazionalle de Madonnari.
“People want to connect with art and through art,” Erik observed. “It’s not enough to just paint a pretty picture. People are looking to engage. There was a time when art was primarily about the artist and their ideas, but that time is passing. Art is now becoming more about finding ways for people to connect, not only with the art but each other. It’s our job as artists to become facilitators of those moments.”
Among his more notable works are several panels in the Buck’s Backyard Mural at McCollum Hall in Fort Myers. He also played an instrumental role in the River Basin Mural Project in the downtown Fort Myers River District.
Mural cloth in Schlake’s future
Although Schlake isn’t prepared to give up mural work, he is planning to use mural cloth wherever possible.
Mural cloth is a fairly recent innovation that enables muralists to paint portions of a mural inside the studio. The cloth is then affixed to the concrete wall or other surface through the use of epoxies that actually harden the paint and make the pigments less prone to fading and cracking.
“Definitely more mural cloth is in my future,” said Schlake. “I think we’ve really refined the techniques on that and so over the course of the last couple of years, we really kind of honed in on how to use it properly and the applications that it could fit.”
Not only does mural cloth enable artists to work in the comfort of their air-conditioned studios rather than the heat, humidity and searing sunlight of an outdoor environment, buy also has benefits for the property owner.
“It helps the client by keeping us off site as much as possible so that we're not interfering with their business.”
Artist also had to learn how to accept help
Schlake not only had to learn new painting techniques, but he also had to learn to accept help – from fellow artists, his children and his network of friends.
“I had lots of paperwork to fill out, but I couldn't do it because I couldn't see, so I asked my daughter, 'hey, can you just fill this out for me, sign my name, and send it in?' And when she was done, she goes, 'thank you very much for letting me help you.' And that made me realize that I wasn't allowing people in to help, and in some ways, it almost becomes very selfish to tell people no, I got this, I can do it. But not letting other people in to help kind of keeps people at a distance.”
A number of his artist friends have stepped in to help Schlake complete mural projects so that he continues to have an income stream, and he’s also had to accept financial assistance to cover his surgical and dental and medical bills since, as a “starving artist,” he had no health insurance coverage.
“Luckily, we were able to take care of a lot of the eye stuff on our own, but it was just at the point between the medical costs and the not working that it's like, all right, this is really depleting us,” Schlake conceded. “I’'ve always been big on community and building a community. My goal in doing that was always to help other people. Never in my life had it dawned on me being the recipient of that. But I think my big lesson in that is it's great to be self-sufficient, but there's also something, it takes almost a lot of courage to ask for help.”
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
