Artist Biography

While I have been interested in art for as long as I can remember, I did not have a chance to formally begin developing my talent until my junior year of high school. It was in my first art class that I gained experience with drawing and painting mediums.

I began attending East Central College in Union, Missouri, in the fall of 1999. While there I was able to expand my skills through a wide variety of classes, including drawing, painting, printmaking, figure drawing, design, and business of art. I worked for East Central College's student newspaper, the Cornerstone, as the graphic arts editor. I drew all the covers of the paper and illustrated cartoons and pictures for headlines.

After leaving college I have had an assortment of different opportunities to use my abilities. I worked for St Clair Monument designing and lettering headstones which gave me a chance to learn to use my art as a tool in the workforce. I later was accepted for an internship to study sculpture in Rutland, Vermont, at the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center. During this time I kept creating and experimenting with my own art, driven by new life experiences, a new environment, and the excitement of spontaneity. I also worked for The Chaffee Center for the Visual Arts in Rutland, Vermont, as a drawing and painting instructor for two years before returning to Missouri in 2006.

Since moving back from Vermont to St. Clair, Missouri, a lot has changed in my personal life along with my professional life. I am married and have two children, a girl and a boy. My daughter is almost three years old and my son is four months old. My daughter stays up late with me when I work on my art and draws her own pictures too!

I work as a graphic designer eight hours a day and come home work at night to work on my own ideas. My full-time job is with a company called Paramount Apparel, which designs clothing for many different companies all over America. My artwork has grown and changed as well; through the internet, as well as art shows and other resources, I am able to reach a larger audience by selling my original works and signed prints all around the world. Currently, in my work, I am concentrating on the human form and how it relates to machinery in being created, given a job, wearing out, and seizing.

My brain is constantly crowded with ideas and thoughts on what new creations I can do and how I can do them, and I will continue to create until my engine breaks down.