Biography

Born on the last day of a year with thirteen moons, I grew up in an otherwise typical American manner within the suburban orbit of New York City. As a youth I flourished under the influence of underground comic books and New Jersey skateboard culture, compulsively doodling through class and straight into an art school education. I studied subversion and general fine arts at Maryland Institute College of Art, graduating in 2003. From there, I migrated north to Brooklyn to further my education at the School of Visual Arts in the study of graphic design after working for a spell designing fliers for Manhattan nightclubs. After a few years pretending I was living the 1980s on the Lower East Side and working at a photo archive, I whimsically decided to relocate to Los Angeles to try to do the same in a new place with a more appealing climate. Through sheer luck of wit and youthful charm, I soon found work as a freelance photo editor for Getty Images, as a digital background painter for restorations of Disney animations, and then as a graphic designer for Penthouse Magazine, all while cultivating a deep passion for hiking and backpacking throughout the parks and deserts of Southern California. When covid arrived and much of the global economy was suspended, I used my time to develop an illustrative style in my art practice more closely related to the variety of subjects and stories that interest me on a personal level: history, landscapes of the mind, and forgotten cultures, all heavily inspired by my explorations of the California wilderness.