Papa (my Mother’s father) repaired watches for a living and tinkered with a lot of junk in his garage. He had the coolest stuff around to build things with. He was also a Sunday painter and did portraits of all the Grandkids and painted landscapes which were mostly copied from old postcards. My Mom had some artistic talent too, when she was a teenager Papa signed them both up for a weekend painting class at the Kansas City Art Institute. The subjects were nude models. Papa was a little embarrassed to be painting nudes next to his daughter. Poppy (My Grandma) wouldn’t let him hang the nudes up in their house. They stayed hidden for many years.

My Mother did some great artwork as a student in high school and college but never pursued art as a career, she became a nurse instead. I don’t think Papa or my Mother would think that someone could actually make a living in the art world, though they both respected it and saw it as a necessary outlet, to them it was just a hobby.

I took to drawing pictures from the moment I was born. Granddad (my Father’s Dad) worked at a print shop and always had a constant supply of bound paper pads for me to attach images to.

Like most kids of my generation I was fascinated with monsters, soldiers, robots, space ships... When I was bad and my parents sent me to my room I just shrugged my shoulders because I would be in my room anyway drawing pictures.

Papa was one of the first to get a VCR, in fact he had two of them and bootlegged a lot of action and horror movies, copying rented movies onto blank VHS tapes. Somehow I was able to watch R rated horror movies at a young age.

Once I drew a picture of boy and his dog fishing at lake for Poppy. A sweet picture which she loved, but only when she put her glasses on could she see the dead bodies floating in the water and a scary hand with a knife coming from out of the nearby trees. I would make drawings for my grandparents based on gore and monsters all the time. My Grandma was kind of religious and shrugged it off saying “Well God gave you the talent to draw awful things so it’s ok, I guess.” What I’m getting at is I was always supported in my creative endeavors.

I didn’t think you could make a living at art either, I thought I could maybe be an architect or something because those guys drew stuff. I went to a State University right out of high school and took art classes because that was what I was most excited about. I had to take some algebra and history classes too but mostly slept though them.

After a few years of state school my mother asked if I wanted to look into the Kansas City Art Institute as a new school option. (I think she mostly wanted me to live nearer to her). I always knew about the school, I would pass by it on the way to the comic book shop and was perplexed by all of the weird blue and green haired students that just seemed to hang out on the lawn. I never knew what really went on there.

I toured the school, visited the printmaking program, yeah that was nice I guess, went to ceramics, ok, I like dishes I guess, went to photography, yes, pictures are nice, stopped by painting, I don’t understand abstract art, then finally landed at the illustration department... students were drawing robots and monsters! There was an industry set around the subject matter I grew up with! Cartoons, horror movies, comics, children’s books! I never realized.

So I got my degree in Illustration. When I graduated I tried to get some freelance jobs, the local paper, the local lifestyle magazine... a few hundred bucks here and there. I wasn’t really making art at a pace that I was as a student. I felt like I didn’t have a consistent body of work. No one was telling me what to paint, no assignments were due. I saw that the local coffee shop exhibited original work so I approached them to see if I could have a little show. It would be a deadline for me to produce 12-20 new pieces with a common theme. Then maybe I would have enough new work for a new portfolio.

My initial idea was to do a series of characters on cruise ships. They were awful but they overall had some really wonderful textural areas. I ripped up the paintings and utilized those charged textural surfaces to create new paintings, a mix of media and collage. I didn’t want any horror narrative to complicate things and took concept out of the images, I was beginning to mature in my sensibilities. I instead just focussed on this newly discovered collage and paint technique and how I could show the urban landscape and the figures that inhabited it. Drawing on my heroes of the Ash Can school, George Bellows, John Sloan, etc... I took the the show seriously, got everything framed nicely, got some postcards printed, hired a Flamenco guitar player to play at the opening, had wine and cheese... Sold everything! I was shocked, did it again a few months later at another coffee shop, raised prices, and again sold everything. After that I felt confident in my work and thought I could do it at a commercial gallery.

I approached what I thought was the best gallery in my hometown of Kansas City. Did a solo show there within the year and sold everything, that led to a few other galleries in other parts of the country representing my work.

All of the sudden I felt no interest in becoming a commercial illustrator. I wanted to paint the content that I decided on from my own prompts from the day to day life that I existed in. Kansas City got too small for me and it was sad seeing my fellow artist friends give up and get 9-5 jobs. In 2000 I moved to New York City because I felt that it was the center of all things artistic and it had the subject matter of the urban experience that excited me.

I was productive in my new home, I was picked up by a Cheslea gallery and a gallery in Boston, and was found by a gallerist from Milan. So all of the sudden I was showing internationally as well. Sales were good, not enough to get ahead but enough to keep me going. I would adjunct painting classes at Pratt Institute which was great because it connected me to artists of other generations and the paycheck helped subsidized my living expenses.

After 10 years my wife and I relocated to Richmond, Virginia from New York City and I became excited by the fact that I could finally go physically big with my paintings after trying to create artworks in a tiny Brooklyn apartment.

Now is the right time for me to step away from the “busyness” of life and energize my studio practice. I am a semi-new father (my daughter is 3 1/2 years old) vexed by an irony: the transition to parenthood has changed my engagement with the world and inspired new artistic ideas and ambitions, but that same transition makes it difficult to maintain the same regular studio schedule I’ve enjoyed for many years.

To create images, I begin with an under drawing on wood panel, then apply layers of mixed media— wallpaper scraps, notes from my wife, wine bottle labels, ticket stubs, detritus found on the street, human hair, fabric scraps, subway maps, anything colorful and / or amusing. I then paint the image with acrylics and oils, knifed on to enhance the surface texture. My aggressive collage technique creates a texture that gives mystery, depth, and movement to my paintings, which often feature dynamic cityscapes and urban canyons, and interacting figures in settings that can imply narrative.

This approach to image making becomes more challenging and potentially problematic in larger scales and when portraying subjects. In recent years, each of my solo exhibition has featured a range of sizes, including one or two large pieces. As an artist driven by process and interaction with materials, working large is the ultimate realization of my practice and vision. Creating life- sized, environments allows me to be surprising in my problem solving and further manipulate my surfaces.

The painting themselves have the potential to feel aggressive to the viewer, even if the image itself is beautiful or otherwise pleasing. I aim to spark in viewers juxtaposed feelings of being drawn-in (by both an energetic pallet and the surface texture that compels a closer look) and disquieted by the subjects near animate because of their scale.

The logistics of working with large pieces of art can be difficult. I work on wood panels because I need a sturdy surface that can handle collage, acrylic paints, oil paints, and varnish. It is important that my craft be impeccable and professional. 

I still teach in an adjunct capacity and have done so for 8 years now at Virginia Commonwealth University which is a top ranked arts college.