Meet Eric Hagan

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Eric Hagan a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Eric with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?

I owe any bit of success I’ve had to my work ethic, and for that I owe my parents. On top of working full time as public school teachers, my father worked a second job doing construction and my mother was always coming up with clever ways to make a few bucks selling art and giving art lessons to her students in the summer. I began joining my father on the job site after school and on the weekends when I was about 11 or 12 and worked with him on and off until I was 26. My dad is a true artist in his craft and an obsessive perfectionist. I believe that the years working manual labor, I’ve also been a farmer and a landscaper, assists me in my art practice. To know that quality demands time and persistence, consideration and methodical focus. But instead of laying endless tiles, I’m spending all day making dots with a marker. If you want to make something worthwhile, you need to just keep going and do what needs to be done. Stamina plays a big role in making art. Of course the process is interspersed with flashes of inspired frenzy, but the majority of making my art is physical, tedious and monotonous. It’s a job, and I’m grateful to have been raised by hard workers.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

My art is a mix of an obsessive compulsion and a mysterious conviction. It is my white whale, I am utterly fixated on this instinctual hunch I first had, 19 years ago, when I began making art like this. It really has been the one constant throughout my life. Throughout high school, college, Americorps, the Peace Corps, I always felt the urge to draw like this. No matter where life had taken me, from the frigid border town I spent 4 years in studying Creative Writing to a rural Zambian village, where I lived for three years as a farmer, I always made this art. I have never deviated from the style, just continued to investigate the siren call that lulled me deeper into this obsession. It was not until I returned to America that I had even considered a career as an artist. The decision to pursue a career in art came from my experience in Zambia. The lessons in hard work and the cultural emphasis on cleverness and creativity as a means of survival I’d absorbed from my surrogate community allowed me to hit the ground running. I simply applied the tactics I’d been using to sell honey and fruit trees to promoting the thing I had always done naturally. The journey has been hard, but with the love and support of my wonderful wife, Jess, and a little bit of my own scrappiness, I am proud of the success I’ve found. Success by my definition of it, the opportunity to share my art with the world. We now live in NYC, and I’m still going for it.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

First, adaptability. I went into this journey knowing nothing. I tried and failed, got rejected a million times, and felt like I was smashing my head against a wall. But I learned, I adjusted, tried new things. I sought out advice, but was wary to not trust all advice. Move like water, find the cracks that will let you pass through these obstacles. Second, support. It’s a very daunting thing to be an artist in todays world. It can feel so impossible, such an outlandish delusion. However, making a living as a creative person is not beyond the limits of possibility. In fact, many people will want you to succeed. Lean onto your early supporters. Your friends, your family, your community. These people want to see you do the thing that makes you happy, that feeds your soul. This is your first stage, your first audience, show them what it is that you do. Let their faith in you carry you through the hopeless moments. Finally, do it for you. Make your art like you did when you were a kid, for fun, to feel alive. Success is not about being a celebrity. The silent thrill of making art will always feel better than the applause.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

In NYC I am currently trying to find backers to create a unique kind of immersive art installation. Essentially, I am trying to build a giant work of art that will host different creative performances within the art itself. I turn my art into mirrored wallpaper that I use to cover the floors, walls and ceiling in a shifting sea of moving faces. I am trying to find a space that will let me do this on a large scale, big enough for an entire audience. I am looking for folks who will help me build my dream.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://erichaganart.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/eric_hagan_art
• Other: https://reddit.com/u/tandizojere