Quote

Art is one of the few ways we have of dealing with things that frighten or anger us.

Eric Drooker

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Eric Drooker
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: January 1
Comics Artist
Painter
New York City
New York
Ways
Art
Way
Things
Frighten
Dealing
Anger

More quotes by Eric Drooker

Image
I think for an artist there are so many things to make pictures of now, that everyone else may be suffering, but at least artists will just be stimulated by it all.
Eric Drooker
Image
I don't even believe in magic, or ghosts or anything like that, and yet in a city like New York, on the subway, I definitely see ghosts and art seems to have some magical properties.
Eric Drooker
Image
By the time I was in my early-twenties and was living there on the Lower East Side, I was so surrounded by tragedy that I think that inspired me to try to reflect it in the artwork.
Eric Drooker
Image
Illustrators are usually illustrating something big or commercial if not outright advertising. It's a form of prostitution, but that's cool because we don't have any moral hang-up about it.
Eric Drooker
Image
When I was younger, when I was a teenager, the work was more satirical and funny and cartoony. And part of it was chops - if you have a more limited repertoire of stick figures and cartoon characters, they lend themselves more to humor than to tragedy.
Eric Drooker
Image
The poster art over the years, art with social critique in it, has always been on class war theme. It's been trying to make that point - that we are larger than they are. They may have guns and pepper spray and helicopters and F16s and the whole U.S. military on their side, but when it comes down to it, we still have the numbers.
Eric Drooker
Image
Doing art that has a happy ending, that doesn't seem really corny, is extremely difficult to pull off convincingly.
Eric Drooker
Image
With what we've been taught is the proper role of art, which is that you want to have it very neatly matted and framed and put on a white wall in some room where only a certain class of people are going to go in.
Eric Drooker
Image
Art grabs people by their eyeballs, it seduces them ... art is a means to an end rather than simply an end in itself.
Eric Drooker
Image
Everyone wants to be part of the 99%, even the cops are like, No, no, man. I'm part of the 99% too. No one wants to be part of the 1%.
Eric Drooker
Image
If I do a picture, I want the audience to be the people I was just packed against on the subway or on the street, walking on Fourteenth Street. I don't want it to be some narrow public that I myself feel alienated from.
Eric Drooker
Image
Poster art was always my way of being involved in the conversation. So it wasn't just a one-way conversation with the police yelling at us or freaking us out. Street posters allowed you to have the last word.
Eric Drooker
Image
There's so much tragedy in people that we see every day that we don't have to make anything up. We don't have to invent anything. There are two items on the menu: comedy and tragedy.
Eric Drooker
Image
The client isn't quite satisfied and then the prostitute is always unsatisfied but is doing it just to make ends meet. And if you're doing fine art, if you're doing it for a gallery or a museum, it's so sterilized. It's such an antiseptic environment.
Eric Drooker
Image
As I developed as an artist and studied art history, I noticed that all the great works were dealing with the human condition. [Art] had humor in it. It had sex in it. But it also had sorrow running through it.
Eric Drooker
Image
I try to, at least once or twice a week, have someone over and model, usually a dancer friend or a poet or someone to come over and just stay still for me. Depending on how exhibitionist they are, it will determine the finished work. And I say, You're the muse you come up with it. I'll draw you however you want.
Eric Drooker
Image
We all know artists who like to collaborate, who like to work as a team. It all kind of depends what your habitual working method is.
Eric Drooker
Image
The art was just a way of hooking people in, saying: Hey, maybe there's something cool about the tenant meeting. If the picture's really cool and weird, maybe I should check this out. And I think all of my art has really developed out of that realization.
Eric Drooker
Image
The trick is not to look back, but keep on expressing where I'm at now. It's challenging to create something new, so it's crucial to dwell in the present moment.
Eric Drooker
Image
People don't work in factories, [they aren't] big muscular guys. The working class is flabby because they're sitting in front of a computer all day, but it's still their labor being extracted.
Eric Drooker