Arik Roper

Arik Moonhawk Roper (born 1973) is a freelance illustrator and painter based in New York City. Roper grew up in Richmond, Virginia. His parents both being artists, his creativity was encouraged and he spent a great deal of time during childhood drawing. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in 1995 specializing in cartooning, illustration, and silk-screening, he began as a freelance storyboard artist for various ad agencies, and a storyboard revisionist for MTV Animation. Later he was able to exercise more creative and personal styles while shifting into the world of music-related visual art and packaging. He has since developed a name and devoted following creating seminal record covers and screeprint posters for a wide variety of bands including legends such as Earth, Sunn O))), Sleep, Howlin' Rain, High on Fire, The Black Crowes, Kvelertak, and Windhand among many others. His influences include a wide variety of artists and styles ranging from comic art and fantasy art to graphic design and classic illustration. He was a contributing artist to the highly regarded and cutting-edge Arthur Magazine during the mid 2000s. Arik has also designed hand-made screen-printed posters for a pantheon of concerts and events including Sound on Sound Fest, Roadburn Festival, and Desert Daze Festival. Roper's work encompasses a diverse field of design and distinct style, ranging from graphic black and white illustration, to meticulous lettering and logo design, to rich abstract psychedelic color and landscapes that often seem to exist in their own universe. The imagery springs from the depths of a fertile imagination, invoking psychedelic visions, ancient dreams, and idyllic natural environments. With an interest in mythology, consciousness, psychology, religion and other timeless subjects, Roper mixes the light and the dark within his art to reveal imagery which is at once strangely unique, distantly familiar and always soaked with an earnestly fantastic aesthetic. His book, Mushroom Magick (Abrams, 2009), is a vividly surreal collection of exotic fungal species from around the world. His art has also appeared in books such as De Gotham City a Metropolis by French Paper Art Club, Juxtapoz New Contemporaries, and Revisionaries: A Decade of Art in Tokion.