Mike Schreiber
My work is formed from fast, inarticulate drawing—similar
to what children do for fun. I find that these drawings produce
complicated ideas that wouldn’t surface otherwise. Over time,
shapes and symbols start to reappear, and I can piece together a
mythic universe where things begin to make sense to me.
The paintings inspired by these drawings investigate the psychic
space of fear, nightmares, and mortality. I transform what haunts
me into personal emblems and family crests. These images can
appear simple, even silly, at first read, but they are held together
by a confessional tension. My other world is populated with
shadowy figures that resemble weird fleur-de-lis glyphs and the
curly-cue scripts in iron gates around Brooklyn. Vampires and
domestic cats lurk behind spider webs, mice shiver in the dark,
and alien hands make calls on outdated cell phones. I like it when
the banal becomes supernatural.