The 80's in America were a time when entertainment, advertisement, and
education blended into an epic world of artistic creation. For a suburban
Caucasian youth characters such as Luke Skywalker, He-Man, Burt and Ernie,
Ronald McDonald, and Kermit the Frog were the third set of parents. Such
characters illuminated my imagination through Television, Food, and Toys.

I was born in 1978 in Woodriver, Illinois and live in Alton, Illinois for
the first three years of my life. However, my family moved to Chesterfield,
Missouri when my brain really kicked in. Sparing you the details of my
childhood, it was during this time of my life I met the characters and icons
that would leave the most lasting impression on my imagination.

Years later after many toy industry and product development jobs I find
myself looking back to a time in my life when the characters in my
imagination did not equal licensed. I worked for some of the big names in
collectible / toys Gentle Giant, McFarlane Toys, Master Replicas, and a
couple of projects for Sideshow Collectibles. To an outsider it may seem my
career has been full of dream jobs. Although this is true in many ways,
the characters that inhabited a world of creativity in my mind were slowly
reduced to interoffice politics and profit margins. To go back and revisit
the worlds I inhabited as a kid without the eyes of a product developer has
been rejuvenating.

My artwork now is a mixture of the techniques I have learned along the way
with the admiration for the creativity, characters, and icons that were
presented to me as a child. I am no longer oblivious to the motivations of
the characters in my imagination. Their meaning is a mixture of childhood
emotion with adult disillusion. They all mean something much different to
me now than he did back when I was young. I see Ronald McDonald for the
person he truly is. I see Luke Skywalker as a universal symbol for a hero¹s
path.

The journey I am on now is to rediscover the worlds I once knew. To live
free of the idea that imagination spawns license product and deconstruct the
parental characters of my youth. My work is never finished. Only get to a
point where I feel unembarrassed to show it to the public.