I’ve spent most of my life trying to draw the things I can’t explain. I was born in Longmont, Colorado. During the summer of 1988. I’ve been a creative person since the second grade. Once I start, I can lose myself for hours. Art has always been my constant. I don’t plan my work. Everything I create comes from a subconscious-hallucination. It’s hard to describe. It’s a flash of something in my minds-eye and I follow it.
Growing up, it wasn’t always easy. I wasn’t born into wealth or privilege. I’m a minority that faced prejudice and discrimination. As a kid, we constantly moved and I was always jumping around from school to school. After graduating high school, I didn’t have a plan. To be honest, it was either prison, the daily grind, or join the military. I wanted to do something and find a purpose. So, I signed the dotted line and enlisted to become a 12B Combat Engineer. Even while serving, art remained the constant thread running through my life.
Lane Smith’s illustrations were a huge inspiration to my surreal art style. I would stare at the covers and pages of weird, wild books like The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs and The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales. In my opinion, his work sparked my desire to grow creatively.
Instead of becoming obsessed with dinosaurs I became obsessed with artists. I had learned about the famous four—Leo, Donny, Mikey, and Raph—but I wanted to know more. That curiosity led me to artists like M.C. Escher, Rembrandt, Rubens, Vermeer, and Dalí. By the time I finished third grade, I was an art nerd drawing everything from memory, experiences, and pure imagination. The masters and their work were fuel to my fire.
Then one day, I went to the grocery store. I’d been there a hundred times before, but I had never paid attention to the dingy aisle filled with books and magazines. That day, I decided to explore it. It was there that I found a new source of inspiration—MAD magazine.
To me, it was a tome of forbidden inspiration. Basic still-life painting suddenly couldn’t compete with a magazine. Some illustrations had two—sometimes three—meanings hidden inside a single image. It was pure genius. The artwork connected my imagination to contemporary art and culture. From that point on it pushed the limits of my surreal imagination.
Over time, as my art evolved. I began exploring themes of philosophy, identity, and societal contradictions. I often find myself reflecting on my experiences, emotions, and self-awareness as an aspiring artist. Then, I started to focus on the grey areas. I subconsciously became interested in contradictions—how people justify violence, sacrifice, ambition, loyalty, and love. Those ideas slowly became the foundation of my paintings.
Each painting is a chapter. Every piece reveals a new layer of the story, introducing characters, conflicts, symbols, and hidden connections. As the collection grows, so does the narrative. Themes of war, sacrifice, ambition, memory, and humanity emerge through the relationships between my artworks.
Each painting stands on its own, but together they reveal a much larger narrative. A collector can experience the complete journey and uncover the deeper meaning behind my world, its characters, and struggles. My artwork is more than an art collection:
It’s a story told through paintings.
A novel without pages.
A mythology revealed one chapter at a time.