A master who captures his models personalities with his brush!
San Francisco-based artist Eric Strenger is a shining example of the power that lies with the beholder, especially when he can translate his observations into a series of acrylic canvases. Not exactly a process that you reflect over the first time a Strenger-portrait grabs your attention. Why? Because you’ll be too busy being hypnotized by DMX’s crazy looking dog or backing off in order to fully take in Notorious B.I.G.’s enormous face that gazes at you with the unpredictability of a ghetto god. If you thumb through Strenger’s published calendar, with a portrait of a rap star for each month of the year, it’s easy to get the impression they’re nasty caricatures. But after looking at the pictures for a while you notice that warped details like Ice T’s huge lips of Dr  Dre’s Stankonia-smile are characteristic features. Strenger, in his slightly surrealistic style, succeeds to say more about the artist’s personality in one portrait then they themselves do in all of their records combined.

A reason why you can’t help but like his paintings as they cross the boundary of just being a mere portrait into becoming the people that have been depicted. Where photographers mainly rely on capturing the moment, Strenger has with his brushes and acrylic paints managed to prolong his impressions into infinity. A fact that makes his paintings last longer than photographs. Educated at art-school Strenger wants to push for better art within hip-hop. Along the way he samples street culture, just as the artists he paints do, as well as fine art in his paintings. In a musical parallel you could say that his paintings look like what is sounds like when rap artist Common samples an established jazz musician like Gil Scott-Heron and reworks the music through a relatively unknown streetwise producer like Jay Dee.

But in the end Eric Strenger is more street than anything else and not just through his choice of subjects. He also spends a lot of his time giving art lessons in California’s overcrowded jails. The fact that he comes from the graffiti tradition, depicts marijuana-leaves in his portraits and hopes to collaborate with Jay-O Felony hardly places him in the galleries of the  establishment. You’re more likely to find his art in RZA’s living room, The Roots rehearsal studio or in Snoop Dogg’s dog house. -Jenny Sorby for zoovillage.com 2002.