Details:
① Artwork:
Tree Line
In this painting, thick white lines surround each tree as if they are brimming with electricity—while dark storm clouds fill the sky. The composition depicts trees as both lightning rods and shelter from an imminent downpour. In the artist’s current body of work, trees and their understory become tools for the artist to conjure up childhood experiences growing up in rural Georgia.
Hancock has a tumultuous relationship with solid form and narrative, frequently turning his paintings toward the abstract. The artist was raised in rural Georgia, and his childhood was often spent looking up at the understory of windswept trees, which he conjures through the language of abstraction. The artist pairs his subject matter with his interest in formal experimentation. Drawing inspiration from Japanese woodblock prints, Hancock's landscapes are distorted to the point of fantasy until they are almost swallowed whole by sumptuous, solid colors. In the artist's work, the discontinuities and distortions follow a surrealist logic—functioning like lucid dreaming.
Specs:
③ Artist:
Eric Dwight Hancock creates abstracted paintings of windswept trees and other natural imagery that conjure memories of his childhood in rural Georgia. Inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, the artist distorts his landscapes to the point of fantasy—until they are almost swallowed whole by sumptuous colors. The discontinuities and distortions of Hancock’s work follow a surrealist logic, functioning like lucid dreaming.
BIO:
Eric Dwight Hancock was born in 1982. The artist received an MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia in 2008, and a BFA from the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia in 2004.
Solo exhibitions of Hancock’s work have taken place at: Trunk Gallery in Los Angeles, California (2017); and Stan McCollum Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia (2014).
Group exhibitions that have shown Hancock’s work include: Local Masterworks of American Art at Nino Mier Gallery in Los Angeles, California (2020); Galaxy Brain at St. J Gallery in Los Angeles, California (2020); Coning the Cube at Permanent Storage Projects in Los Angeles, California (2019); Subject/Observer at Keystone Gallery in Los Angeles, California (2019); Magic Makers at Class Project in Los Angeles, California (2019); LITTLE THINGS Mean A Lot at Swan Coach House Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia (2015); Sprawl: Drawing Outside the Lines at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia (2015); Dirty South at Mammal Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia (2015); and Pretty Vacant at 95 4th Street in New York City (2011).
Hancock lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
