Check Out Marc Strickland’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Marc Strickland

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
For as long as I can remember, I have loved art. As a child, I would frantically claim every piece of scrap paper in the house to leverage toward my creative abilities, carefully cataloging them in a drawer in my mom’s desk. When I was old enough to start going to work with my dad, this practice was elevated by a new, and seemingly endless supply of office printer paper, which I was all too eager to turn into a stack of comics before the end of the workday. Week after week, I would make these guest appearances at the office, and eventually I learned how to work the copy machine, which enabled me distribute these stolen office supplies amongst all of my favorite members of the staff.

Little did I know that these comics would be the foundation of my blossoming art career. The encouragement and support I got from all of these adults sunk in deep and really propelled my creativity forward. As I advanced through school, art class was always my favorite. I can still fondly remember the chalky smell of paint and clay that permeated the long, narrow hallway leading to the art room.

This was the only time in the school day that I ever felt as though I was truly “on task”, and actually doing what I was supposed to do. The rest of the day in class, all of the various subjects seemed to take a back seat to whatever doodles and sketches crawled their way out of my brain and landed on the paper that my notes and homework belonged on. This cacophonous creativity slowly became more and more of a concern for my teachers and parents, as it was seen as a distraction from my studies. Still, all the school psychologists, and doctors, and experimental focus techniques, and medication were no match for the brainstorm of creativity that brewed within me.

As I grew older still, I eventually learned to leverage my wandering mind and use it to my educational advantage. My doodles were exiled to the margins and spaces between paragraphs, and this structure helped my notes to ultimately become more organized, and more engaging to return to and study. Despite occasional objections from skeptical teachers and professors, this system served my visually oriented mind quite well and was instrumental in my education all throughout college, where I was able to rework enough of these doodles and spontaneous drawings, as well as more developed concepts from sketchbooks into final pieces, and paintings.

These paintings were the works I unveiled at my first art show: The Spin Cycle. This show was the result of a spontaneous visit to an ordinary laundry-mat in Englewood where I noticed a space in the back that was for rent. It was a small, separate room tucked in a far corner with a little window that viewed the array of washers and dryers in the rest of the building. The small sink in the wall with a built in neck rest made me think that it must have once been a little salon space that was hidden away within this other small business. The only other remnants of this business were the hand painted walls, patterned with abstract sponge blots of of blue that produced a crazy, camouflage type of pattern. I knew immediately that this would be a wonderfully weird place to do a popup art show, and I got right to work prepping my pieces and reaching out to other artist friends I had.

We worked out a deal with the owners to rent out the space for one night, and invited as many people as we could to this small neighborhood laundrette in Englewood. People brought food, drinks, big speakers for music, and even more people for what amassed to be quite the spectacle for the people who just showed up to simply do their laundry, and we invited all of them to come and witness the force of creativity that had crept into their otherwise mundane errand. I continued to ride this high for many years, leading me to participate in a couple of professional, large scale art shows through the organization “Raw”, and even another small independent one in New York City at a fancy hipster restaurant in Bushwick.

The year 2020 saw me graduate from college and definitely changed the priorities of my art. Without the constant opportunities to doodle in class, I have had to challenge myself to make more and more time in the day to do drawings, even recently challenging myself to do more daily portraiture studies from random mugshots. I have also noticed that my doodling style of note taking has transferred well outside of an academic setting, and continues to help my visually oriented brain to process and retain information more easily.

Though I havent had another art show in a while, I have a great top-secret new concept for another pop-up show that I want to execute soon once I have more finalized recent works amassed. In the meantime, I still actively like creating street art and I setup a booth on the curb, pirate style on Santa Fe for First Fridays. I am also slowly learning the art of tattooing as another means of making and selling artwork, so hopefully you will encounter one of my creations out in the wild somewhere you’d least expect.

At times in my life, my weird mind has made me feel at odds with existence. There were even times in my youth that caused me to curse the way my brain operates by default; always making me feel alienated from my peers, or like a distracted space cadet floating off far from reality. The more I persisted through these feelings however, the more I came to truly appreciate these ways in which I approach life differently and the more I have seen the advantages this has given me at various points in time. Now I am always looking for new inspiration and challenging the ways that I perceive the constantly shifting world around me.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
My challenges included grappling with my attention span, and my ability to focus. I can occasionally focus quite well on creative tasks, but I still try work around my ADHD riddled brain, and find myself frequently juggling tasks.

I also have struggled many times through life with the fact that creative pursuits rarely seem to pay the bills. Obviously, there are many successful artists out there, but the supply always seems to outweigh the demand, and I have such a desire to share my creations that the business side of it often takes a back seat. I tend to find myself wishing that creative jobs and pursuits were more ar the forefront of our culture, but the zeitgeist of today seems to be “content creation” more than anything, but for me, that is all the more reason to really work hard to make my art stand out and really represent who I am and my individual tastes.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I would say that I specialize more in line work and bold, graphic styles of art. I appreciate realism and unique and strange portraiture, and I try to rework these through a more 2D, line work heavy lens. This style also seems to lend itself well to tattooing, which is part of why I have started to try to branch out and learn more of those skills and styles.

I would say that my love of history and classical styles sets my work apart. I am frequently researching art history, and finding artists and movements forgotten by time, that I can leverage for inspiration. Lately I have been really into Art Deco and Art Nouveau and I really like how prevalent these styles were with pulp art and ornamental design in books of the 1920s and 1930s.

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I hope that over the next 5-10 years. That society will shift back towards an appreciation of craftsmanship and beauty. I am admittedly somewhat of a maximalist, but I think that there should always be beautiful details put into any creative work. For me, this highlights the love and care that goes into art, and I can only hope that the more vapid and vacuous tends of late will cause people to crave more substance and beauty in all things designed.

This is also what has attracted me to pursuing tattoos as a new medium. I think they will only continue to get more popular and people tend to have more vision and taste when it come to art that they are stuck with forever. I hope that I will be able to leverage my unique preferences to help guide people to lasting and beautiful art they will continue to enjoy for years to come.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lov3cult.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lov3cult/