Eric Schreeck

Some of us have odd jobs
And some of us have fine positions
And most of us survive the best we can

These lyrics from the song Kiss the Earth on Unextraordinary Gentlemen’s 2012 LP, Stars Pulled Down, succinctly prophesied the so-called “return to normal” where the vast majority of us find ourselves following the twenty-seven declared months of the recent global health emergency.

As American Gothic in the Post-Digital Age as was Grant Wood in the Dirty Thirties, the musical poetry of front man Eric Schreeck is as mindful of cabaret as of canticle.

What strikes the viewer most about Schreeck’s ink illustrations –especially when seen as a group, are the many, novel approaches to shadow and light. There are Victorian floral arrangements composed of fragile lines in busy intersection and there are Abyssinian hollows layered with dense, dramatic penumbra that channel Weimar by woodcut. The work is an intuitive extension of Eric’s decades-long career in music; one which spans post-punk to steampunk.

One can find Beardsley and Dürer, but mostly one finds Schreeck.

“Physical nature collides with the surreal facets of human understanding in these small works of ink and ego”

This collection of 17 postcard-sized drawings is intended as a primer; an affordable initiation of sorts. More than a debut exhibition, this is a front row seat for the fertile mindscape of a Los Angeles counterculture icon at the precipice of significant rediscovery.

ABOUT THE ARTIST