Artist Eric Nofsinger’s solo exhibition “Some of My Bruises Have Names” will debut Friday, Oct. 2, 2026, at Kortman Gallery in downtown Rockford. (Photos provided by Kortman Gallery)
By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — A Rockford artist who spent years making video games with some of the industry’s largest publishers is launching a new solo art exhibit in conjunction with Fall ArtScene.
Eric Nofsinger’s exhibition “Some of My Bruises Have Names” opens Friday, Oct. 2 at Kortman Gallery, 107 N. Main St., in downtown. It features his acrylic painting and mixed-media work on canvas centered largely on eerie, mythical figures.
“A bruise is proof of contact. It’s also a slow thing — a patch of skin cycling through its colors while it decides whether or not to become a story,” Nofsinger said in a news release. “That’s close to how my paintings are made. Thin washes of acrylic go down one over another, violet under green under a yellow that only shows up where the layers thin out, and the figure surfaces somewhere in the middle of that.”
Nofsinger has long been a painter, but his career in the video game industry took his attention away from the craft for years.
He was hired in 1994 as the first artist for a small video game studio called High Voltage Software, which later worked on games such as “The Conduit,” “Saints Row IV,” and multiple seasons of “Fortnite.” He eventually became co-owner and chief creative officer of a 185-person operation at High Voltage, which was acquired by Keywords Studios in late 2020. He’s been involved in video games for more than three decades.
“The paintings are the other half of that life, picked back up,” Nofsinger said. “They are made by one pair of hands for one viewer at a time, layered washes and bruise-colored surfaces where dream figures surface slowly rather than arriving all at once. The subjects come from the eerie, the half-playful, and the mythic: the figure that turns up in the hallway at four in the morning and refuses to explain itself.”
An opening reception will happen in conjunction with Fall ArtScene from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2 and Saturday, Oct. 3 at the downtown gallery. Admission is free
J.R. Kortman Center for Design and Kortman Gallery are open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday.
For more information visit jrkortman.com or call 815-968-0123.
“People Took Them for Twins” by Eric Nofsinger. (Image provided by Kortman Gallery)
This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas