Giant

"Giant Woman" - Eric Drooker

Eric Drooker (b. 1958, New York) is an American painter, graphic novelist, and illustrator.

Drooker grew up in Manhattan's Stuyvesant Town, adjacent to the Lower East Side, which was then a working-class immigrant neighborhood with a tradition of left-wing political activism. He attended the Downtown Community School and spent the summers of 1969, 1970 and 1971 at Camp Meadowlark in Monterey, Massachusetts. Drooker developed an early interest in graphic arts and cartoons, particularly the woodcut novels of Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward and the underground comics of Robert Crumb.

During the 1980s, Drooker was further radicalized by his experiences with the police, due to their actions against squatters in the rapidly gentrifying Tompkins Square Park area and their increasing intolerance of unlicensed street artists and musicians.

In the 1990s, Drooker broadened his scope from graphic arts to painting, creating several covers for The New Yorker and a book of illustrations of Allen Ginsberg's poetry, Illuminated Poems.

In 2006, the Library of Congress acquired the original art for FLOOD! A Novel in Pictures, including preliminary drawings, sketches and cover paintings. The complete Flood Archive is housed in the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, which is open to the public. (read more)