Arik Moonhawk Roper is a visionary illustrator from New York City. He graduated from The School of Visual Arts in New York in 1995 with a degree in cartooning, and an independent study in screen printing. Merging his love of music and art, he began his early career primarily working with bands creating album art for which he has built a significant following. He continues to be a renowned artist in the field of album cover art with more than 60 titles to his credit including some off the most iconic in the genres of heavy rock, psychedelic, and metal. Arik has also worked extensively in storyboard art, animation design, screen print design, book and magazine illustration, skateboard and snowboard graphics, film poster and prop design, visual design for music industry artists and music festivals, and as an Art Director for a card game company. Arik’s work encompasses diverse styles, ranging from black and white illustration, to lettering and logo design, to simple graphic imagery, to vibrantly detailed color illustrations. He works proficiently in traditional mediums such as watercolor, ink, and gouache, as well as digitally.

Arik 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. He considers his art to be glimpses of dreams and visions brought back like artifacts from the depths of imagination. He ventures to create gateways that may invite the viewer to imagine not only what is seen but what is beyond. He draws inspiration from a variety of sources such as Mythology, Consciousness, Psychology, Religion, Animated films, Science Fiction and Fantasy literature, Graphic Novel and Comic art, Golden Age Illustration, and Nature itself.