Eric Santoscoy-Mckillip is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. He was born in 1989 and raised in the U.S./Mexico borderland city of El Paso, Texas. Eric earned a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin, in 2011, a Masters in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Texas at El Paso in 2015 focusing on art education and border studies, and a MFA in Fine Art from the New York University in 2017. He has shown in Texas, New Mexico and New York.
Moving between painting and sculpture, his work is an examination of place and identity through the use of color, symbols, space, and textures by reclaiming what has already been reclaimed. The transitions between these elements shift, overlap and blur to reflect the physical and metal in-between space of the US-Mexico borderland, the continually changing complex identities and histories of his own and of the geographic region. Eric’s practice is a tool to reassess the narratives told to be true or that he has pieced together himself and those that have been passed on by oral, familial and communal histories. He uses it to connect to people and places he no longer can and reflect on imagery through the time spent with it. Building a lexicon through different techniques, like making and using stucco as both a texture and protectant or applying layers of paint to abstract the underlying form, he pays respect to the lineage of the painting (i.e. sand paining, sign painting, car painting, murals, landscape) in the southwest and US/Mexico border culture while using a both minimal/maximal language to isolate, bring specificity and focus on this place that is fleeting, shifting and changing.
Follow Artist on Instagram @ericsantoscoymckillip