Eric Mcnew

Eric McNew is an abstract mixed-media painter based in Knoxville, Tennessee. Formally trained and working as a creative director for more than two decades, he spent years shaping visual language for others before returning to a practice entirely his own.
For nearly five years, essential tremors forced him away from the work he loved. In the fall of 2025, he picked up a brush again — not in spite of what his hands could no longer do, but because of it. What emerged was bolder and more alive than anything he had made before. Unable to chase fine detail, he found himself drawn toward the essential: color, gesture, weight, feeling. The tremor that once felt like an ending had become, unexpectedly, a liberation.
Eric has been making art since the 1990s, and his work carries that depth of experience — layered surfaces, restless mark-making, and a fearless use of color that feels hard-won rather than accidental. His paintings don’t ask to be decoded. They ask to be felt.