Artist uses own face for art

Break on Through Local artist Mack Shroer uses his own face in most of his artwork. He can be found at Bosco’s downtown on Saturday nights drawing portraits.

Art can be expressed in many different ways, and Mack Schroer, a Washburn fine arts graduate, helps to prove this to be true.

From doing paintings and sculptures, to digital arts, such as 3D modeling and even animation, Schroer has done it all.

Schroer started his interest in art in the second grade and since then has gained over 20 years of experience.

“I had to draw a picture of Charlotte’s Web for my second grade class, and when I was done, my mom framed it,” said Schroer. “My teacher also loved it, so I got to go to the other second grade classroom and show my drawing to them. Everyone started clapping for me and really enjoyed it. I felt like that was my moment to shine and I’ve kept up with art and have loved it ever since.”

Throughout his time at Washburn, Schroer did a lot of freelance work, including quilt designs, character designs, creating cartoon designs for The Review, painting an ornament for the White House and so much more.

“There are so many good experiences available at Washburn,” said Schroer. “Washburn was able to create the opportunities for me, and I just maximized them.”

Schroer uses his own face to create a lot of his artwork, making his work not only very unique, but it also draws peoples’ attention.

“I’m kind of revealing a little piece of my multifaceted personality in my self-portraits that I think people feel at certain points in their life,” said Schroer. “People will see an emotional state in one of my self-portraits that they are maybe going through or have already gone through, and they can really empathize with it.”

After graduating Washburn, Schroer did an internship with the Sony company in Seattle and came back and did more freelance work around Topeka. Schroer currently draws portraits on Saturday nights at Bosco’s downtown and has recently started a film production company called Rockhaven Films with a small group of people. The company is a pre-production, production and post-production house, where writing, filming and editing takes place. The company includes a wide variety of services including feature films, still pictures, weddings, music videos and more.

Schroer recently had an art showing at SOHO Interiors, located at 3129 SW Huntoon St., on March 2nd, which featured his “The Conquest of the

Aztecs: A Series of Watercolor Studies” work.

Be sure to stop by SOHO Interiors to check out some of Mack Schroer’s work. More of his work can be accessed online at mschroer.wordpress.com or his animations at www.youtube.com/mylichtenstein.  Schroer can also be contacted about Rockhaven Films and his self-portrait artwork is available on facebook at www.facebook.com/mack.schroer.