Artists Statement
Artist's Bio
Eric McCracken conceives and constructs exoskeletons, headdresses and costumes to visualize mental illness as a 3d narrative to get a better understanding of his own brain. He draws self-portraits obsessively to translate all the confusion and madness into a visual language that he can borrow from inside his head and expel onto the paper.
He lives and works a day job involving numbers in San Francisco, CA. Every morning, he creates artwork for three to four hours before work each day constructing large scale drawings with Copic markers and pens.
He received a BA in Fine Arts although lost his world to substance abuse and abandoned his craft soon after. He taught himself to draw again beginning on Christmas Eve, 2011. Although he drew every day since, he only began to show his work in 2020. First in a solo show at Strut followed by showing at the De Young Museum's Open, both in San Francisco, California. In April 2021, "Self Portrait on Muni" will be shown as a billboard in Los Angeles through "the Billboard Creative".
Artist's Statement
Eric McCracken creates large scale self-portraits capturing the delusional world of a humdrum, pencil pushing homosexual in San Francisco. A past history of drug abuse combined with an unstable detachment from reality created an alienated man-child who lived in his sketchbook without the urge to venture beyond his apartment door. Rather than wear his past, present and future with a cloak of shame, he draws these pieces to embed his demons on paper proudly for anyone to see.