ABOUT ALEX ECKMAN-LAWN
Art by @alexeckmanlawn on Instagram
Alex (he/him) is a Philadelphia-born artist who has dreamt of becoming one since he was six years old and always wanted to attend art school. As a child, he loved art from comics and video games, which made him want to create art of his own.
After finishing school, he worked with metal bands and did some work in comics as well (which he still does today). From there, it took him around 10 years to figure out the direction he wanted to take in creating art, and soon he discovered his love for creating multi-layered, hand-cut paper collages.
Art by @alexeckmanlawn on Instagram
Where do you find inspiration
for your designs?
Just about everywhere, but I’m big on looking for inspiration in different mediums from my own. David Cronenberg and Lynch have played a huge part in my artistic development.
I’m also a huge art history dork, and there are a few painters that mean a whole lot to me. I love Andrew Wyeth’s work for a lot of reasons, chief among them his ability to capture a very specific feeling with landscapes or objects. Maybe it’s my PA blood, but I can’t resist a crumbling barn in an overgrown field.
Music is huge for me as well. I spend a lot of time digging through Bandcamp trying to find new sounds that make me feel something.
Do you have a favorite piece of art you've created to date? What makes it special to you?
I have a few pieces/projects that are really important to me! I did a solo show at the beginning of 2025 with Paradigm Gallery + Studio, featuring my cut paper/collage work about my childhood back surgery. I’m not sure I would call it my FAVORITE work to make, but it certainly means a lot to me. There’s also an older piece that specifically references my favorite Andrew Wyeth painting.
In terms of jobs I’ve done, I feel very grateful to have contributed art to the cover of In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. That’s a really intense, sad, and incredibly compelling book, and it means a whole lot to me that she trusted me with the image that represented it.
Again, I’m a big dork, so I love the work I get to do in comics. I think 9-year-old Alex would lose his mind if he knew he would eventually get to make a Superman cover. I’m particularly grateful to the writer and artist of the book Ice Cream Man. W Maxwell Prince took a risk on me and my work, and I’ll be forever grateful for it!
ALEX ECKMAN-LAWN X OWLCRATE
Photo credit: @thebookscript on Instagram
Alex (@alexeckmanlawn) is the artist behind:
- The exclusive redesigned dust jacket and stenciled edges on the OwlCrate limited edition of Dreamland by Olivie Blake.
- The exclusive redesigned dust jacket and stenciled edges on the OwlCrate limited edition of You Did Nothing Wrong by CG Drews.
- The exclusive redesigned dust jacket and stenciled edges on the OwlCrate edition of The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw, which was featured in the August 2025 ’Lessons In Gore’ Quarterly Horror box.
"I really enjoyed the process [of working on the limited edition of The Library at Hellebore] ! I got to get as weird and gross as I wanted haha! It's also been a real pleasure getting to talk to the author, Cassandra Khaw. We had a really nice conversation about gore and the color pink"
What are some of your favorite
books or authors?
I have to be honest, one of my current favorite living authors is Taiyo Matsumoto, a comics artist. His more recent work, especially Sunny, is some of my favorite comics ever made by anyone. Really beautifully written and illustrated stuff. Often very sad but not in a melodramatic way. Subtle and well observed, both in the art and writing. I think about his art just about every day.
I think this one gets undervalued a bit because a lot of people tend to read it when they're younger, but John Gardner's Grendel is a really lovely book full of the kind of sentences that get stuck in my brain for weeks. Nihilism whispered from the mouth of a monster—super fun stuff.
I also love M.R. James for his ability to create a growing unease in typically stodgy environments. This guy wrote your favorite ghost's favorite ghost story.
