Born from grief, shaped by words, and painted into silence — Letters to the Void traces an artist’s journey through loss, what could not be said, and the slow discovery of a way forward.
I've been making art since I was four. As an adult I settled on landscapes, mostly, wide open spaces. Three years ago, losing my wife to cancer closed all of that down. When I came back to the studio, what came out wasn't landscape anymore. It was words — things I couldn't say, letters that would never be sent, written and rotated and painted over until they nearly disappeared into color and texture. That's how Letters to the Void began.
It didn't stay there. What started as private letters became a way of working — I hold a sentence in my head while I paint it, like a mantra, with my brush. Somewhere along the way I realized this wasn't just about grief, it became my path forward. Now I use it on whatever's going on in my life — self-doubt about the work itself, an old farmhouse full of uninvited guests, the particular ache of being an optimist who doesn't always get what he hoped for. Each canvas holds one of those and argues with itself: chaos against order, private against public. A background settles over the top last, like weather, and the words disappear underneath, mostly unreadable.
I don't really go back and read them. They already did their job. What's left is the form — color, texture, composition — a surface where the feeling can stay without needing to be explained. One piece in this show, “Words Are an Elixir,” is about that directly: not what the words say, but what the saying of them does.
You can read the letters if you want, or you can try anyway. But it's more about the act of creating than the letters themselves.
GALLERY HOURS: Letters to the Void runs September 8 through October 31, 2026. Free to visit Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
ARTIST RECEPTION: Saturday, October 17, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. — free and open to the public. Stay for a night of comedy with Warroad Summer Theatre’s dinner production of Escanaba in da Monlight.
Meet the Artist
ERIC TWAIT
Eric Twait grew up on a farm in Iowa, spending long stretches of time alone, making things — drawing, building, tinkering — long before he understood that art would become a necessity rather than a choice. For years his work was quiet: landscapes, places he'd been, paintings that were really just a way of paying attention and staying grounded.
In 2023, his wife Maria was diagnosed with cancer. He moved into survival mode — caregiving, holding on to every moment, his studio gathering dust. On Christmas Eve, she died. When he returned to the easel, his art took a sudden turn inward.
What came out was words — handwritten, layered, rewritten, some staying legible, others dissolving into color and texture. Lyrics overheard from the stereo while he worked became something closer to letters: to her, to himself, to the silence she left behind. That body of work became Letters to the Void — paintings that don't try to resolve grief or make it understandable, but instead function as records of staying with what hurts long enough to let it change shape.
The series has continued to evolve since — opening from grief into doubt, hope, balance, and love. Eric now splits his time between these text-based abstracts and painterly landscapes of Minnesota lakes, national parks, and beyond. He lives and works in the Brainerd/Baxter area and is sharing his art around Minnesota this year, including this exhibition at Warroad Riverplace.