Obviously I'm a massive music fan, I wouldn't be doing this blog if I wasn't, but one of my other obsessions in life is graphic art. I've always been interested in art and always tried my hand at it, though not being massively successful, I admire those that are and love different, more gothic styles of art. When I discovered Mike Egan's work, I was in awe, the gothic style was something I was interested in immediately and his style, though simplistic, appealed to me. Since discovering him a few months ago I have worked my way through his back catalogue and simply love it, so getting to interview him was something I thought about, even if its not directly music-related, there is undoubtedly a musical influence and feel to his work.
This is the first time I've interviewed someone that isn't a musician so obviously the questions vary and are more about Mike's profession and less to do with music, however I tried to keep a sense of music-focus going in the overall interview.
I hope you all enjoy it, and below I'll add a link to Mike's website so you can keep up with his progression and check out his other work.
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I’m a big fan of punk music, and through-out social media I found Chris #2 from Anti-Flag being a big supporter of your work, so after a while I decided I’d check it out and I was in love from the second I saw it. The gothic style was something that really caught my attention straight-away as well as the simplistic nature of it all, not to mention just how different it was from literally anything I had seen before.
I’m also really into graphic art; band artworks especially, but your work although not being directly connected to music, I feel does have a music-inspired quality to it, and is something that sets it apart from the a lot of the other art out there today.
Questions;
First off, with this being a music based blog I just wanted to start by asking what are some of the bands/songs that you’ve been listening to lately?
I've been listening to Defeater, Touche Amore, Goodtime Boys, Tom Waits, Modern Life is War and Dad Punchers a lot. Also, Run The Jewels, those dudes are amazing.
I’ve seen people describe you as a “punk-rock artist”, does music (or the genre of punk in general) inspire your work at all?
Yeah, I love punk music. I think the rawness and the energy of music is something that I try to bring to my work. Punk is stripped down and simple and that's how I feel about my work. Punk music kind of feels like folk art to me.
If you could ever do some sort of music/band related piece(s), what bands would you like to work with?
I'd love to do a huge project with a big band like Queens of the Stone Age, Nick Cave or Mastodon. I really like when bands/musicians have artists they like work on the album art. Kanye West and Pharrell are good for that as well
In your artwork you have a very unique style; using bold, thick lines you create these surreal gothic-like characters. When did you develop this style and decide that it was what you wanted to primarily work in and what were some of your inspirations for this?
I took a printmaking class in 97 and started doing woodcuts. After college I didn't have access to a print studio so I started painting at home. The bold line work of the prints eventually spilled over into my paintings giving them a graphic quality. I really took to the German Expressionists like Max Beckman, Otto Dix and Kathe Kollwitz. I also love Jose Guadalupe Posada, he's a big influence.
As opposed to the conventional use of paper or canvas, most of your work is actually painted onto wooden panels or wallpaper, is there any real reason for this, do you feel it adds to the piece or is it something that adds to the uniqueness of your work?
I really like to work on wood, it's a great surface to work on. The gives my work a "folk art" feel that I don't think I would achieve with canvas. Painting on wallpaper is really fun to do, I love that there is a pattern to work with and the paper is nice and thick.
Recently for the Comic-Con you did a series of pieces based on famous pop-culture inspired characters, ‘DEATH GOES POP’, if you were to have continued this, what other characters would you have liked to tackle? Have you any plans on doing similar projects?
Doing this series definitely got me thinking about doing more icons. I'm looking to focus on doing more of the horror/monster characters in my work. I recently did King Kong and another Wolfman. I'm also kicking around the idea of doing some bands like Misfits or The Beatles.
Having created many different pieces over a number of years, which are you most proud of?
I'm proud of everything that I've done, I keep building off of every new body of work. I'm extremely proud of the vinyl toys and making the transition from 2-D to 3-D
And lastly, what can we expect to see in the latter half of the year? Have you got any big plans?
I have a solo show in Portland, OR at Breeze Block Gallery in October. Also in October I have group shows in Albuquerque, Oakland, Cincinnati, and Rochester, NY. I'll be doing to custom toys and plenty of small painting sales on my site as well. Busy busy bee.
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I really enjoyed getting to interview someone outside of the core of music, it was slightly daunting when I had to write questions, wanting to keep it music-based but make his artwork the main point, hopefully I done that or didn't do too bad of a job.
Below is Mike's website where you can view all his work from 2011 and another link to his webstore where you can buy prints, wooden originals and even coffins(!!).
Website;
http://www.eganpaintings.com/
Webstore;
http://mikeegan.bigcartel.com/
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