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Biography

Although I started painting when I was a teenager, I did not apply to art colleges after high school. Instead, I attended Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina and received my degree in Art History and Business in 1992. Because I was the curator of the Senior Fine Arts Exhibition, I was able to include my own paintings along with the work of the fine arts majors.

That same year I moved to Atlanta and began my painting career. I worked at an art gallery during the day and in my painting studio in a Means Street warehouse at night. In addition to painting, I put together a series of group exhibitions called X-poz-ure at the warehouse. The last of these exhibitions included 30 artists working in painting, photography, sculpture, performance, fashion design and music. Our final exhibit was in January of 1994 and was shut down by the fire department due to an overcapacity crowd. I never told the owner of the warehouse about the firemen and their warning. I guess he knows by now.

Unbeknownst to my studio mates at Means Street, I was also running with a couple of graffiti crews in Atlanta. At that time, I kept my spray painting a secret. I had also worked the street art circuit in DC in the winter of 1991-92.

After the last blow out show in 1994, I moved to New York. I did the Classic artist thing including a one way ticket and no money. I lived the first summer in an apartment on West 14th street. During the day I worked temp jobs and at night I painted in the apartment kitchen or in the street. The imagery in my work back then consisted of graffiti and cartoon characters as well as buildings and women with their heads cut off. There were some really raw and angry pieces coming out back then. I was still doing the graffiti thing in secret, trying not to get shot. The only thing that kept me in good with the crews was that I could bomb with both hands at once which came in handy doing color fill with fat caps.

After three months, I found myself looking for somewhere to live. At that time there were some condemned buildings in Hell’s Kitchen and the East Village that I could share with junkies and Irish immigrants. If it was cold, I could sleep on the F train because it took two and a half hours to travel from Coney Island to Jamaica Queens, and it was heated. I would just switch trains and travel back and forth for 7 hours. I was still able to paint and draw, but I had to carry all my materials with me. One time, my brother drove into the city from his place in Hoboken and took me home with him. Two weeks in Hoboken with my brother and his wife was like a vacation. My parents did not know I was without an address until now.

I finally got real employment at the Brooklyn Museum and an apartment on Ludlow street with two friends. The Lower East Side was pretty cheap at the time. I slept and painted in the living room behind a giant canvas curtain. In 1995, with the help of a 57th street gallery director, I began renting a tiny studio on Union Square. So, it was day work in the membership office of the Brooklyn Museum and nights working in the studio. I started doing shows in the studio to try and generate some exposure and sales. At the time, I was working in oils, spray paint and conte crayon. Mostly my friends came to the shows, and some of them bought drawings. Charles Cowles used to come to show support. He later was kind enough to provide a scholarship to the New York Studio School for the winter drawing marathon. We are still friends.

In the summer of 1995, World Wide Art Gallery on 57th street offered me a show as long as I paid for the invitations and opening . I also did all the press contact. The show was installed and shut down by the gallery owners the day before the scheduled opening. I guess the imagery was a little rough for 57th street. I press released all the news stations and was interviewed by Don Williams on NBC. The piece was on the 6 and 11 news and showed my studio and paintings. We had the opening in the street in front of the gallery where I had other drawings to display. I had to get a lawyer through Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, and she issued a lawsuit for the return of my paintings that were still locked inside the gallery.

That show, Industrial Nonsense, traveled down to Atlanta for another self promoted show at the Red Light Café/Gallery where it did much better. Three paintings sold. More importantly, one painting sold to someone that I didn’t know. That was my first sale that wasn’t to a friend or family member. That was at the end of 1995.

In 1996, I attended my first and only class at art school. It was the winter drawing marathon at the New York Studio School for Painting and Sculpture. The drawing marathon entailed drawing from models in a setting for eight hours per day. The duration was two weeks. Graham Nickson was my teacher, he was ruthless. We did 6-8 foot drawings and he would come over and just paint over 4 feet of the piece and tell me to start that spot over and do it right.

That instruction was what I needed to proceed. At the Studio School, I learned to focus on every inch of a painting, setting up composition and giving attention to the edges and corners.

I set up another solo exhibition at my friend Christian’s apartment/recording studio in the summer of 1996. The central pieces were oil on canvas with Photorealistic nudes fighting subway trains. In December, I did another self promoted show, this time at Luna Lounge on Ludlow street. These were mostly 4’X4’ acrylics-city interiors and exteriors with cartoon foxes (punky fox) and squirrels (hero squirrel) in the foreground. In addition, Ladybug Transistor played a couple of sets and Ryan Mcginnes collaborated with me on 3 paintings. He was just on the cover of Art News magazine. He is both a visionary artist and very successful at the business.

1997 was kind of a revolutionary year for me and my work. I had noticed a few things from the Luna show. First, the backgrounds in the work looked better before I put the cartoon animals in the foreground. Second, I noticed that all the notes to myself on the studio wall were more interesting than the artwork. Lastly, I noticed that my years painting graffiti were over, due to the overabundance of sets, crews and guns.

That year, I just began painting pictures of my studio on Union Square: Picture after picture of walls, ceiling, sink, and window. I then moved on to painting pictures of run-down motels and dirty subways. It was all working. The imagery allowed me to mess with the paint, to destroy the surface and rebuild and to write all over the pieces. I had used all media for painting up to this point separately, now I just started using all the materials on the same piece. I set up a show in Atlanta at the Means Street Warehouse in December of 1997. 43 of the 44 paintings sold, the last piece I gave to the DJ. That was the breaking point. Everything changed after that.

In January 1998, I signed my first gallery contract with Trinity Gallery in Atlanta. In the summer of the same year, I had my first Solo exhibition in a real gallery. That was the first time that I did not have to pay to have a show. Since then, I have had shows in Florida, Georgia, New York, Michigan, Tennessee, Alabama, Maryland, Oklahoma, Texas, and California. The press has been good to me(click news), and Trinity gallery has taken out full page advertisements for my work in both Art in America and Art News. Photos of my work have also been featured in New American Paintings Volumes 27 and 40.I currently work between my Warren Street studio in Brooklyn and my home and studio in Florida. I have a solo exhibition opening February 2008 at Infusion Gallery in Los Angeles, a group show at Alan Avery Gallery opening February 20th in Atlanta, and a solo show at Wynn Bone Gallery in Annapolis, Maryland in October 2008.  You can keep up to date with the show schedule as I post on the blog page.

After leaving New York in 1999, I moved back to my hometown of New Smyrna Beach Florida and now work between my studio in downtown Brooklyn and my studio in Florida. I am happily married and have 2 children. My kids make appearances in the work periodically, usually on billboards. Since moving to Florida, I have received the Florida Foundation Fellowship grant for visual artists.

I currently work between my Warren Street studio in Brooklyn and my home and studio in Florida. I have a solo exhibition opening February 2008 at Infusion Gallery in Los Angeles, a group show at Alan Avery Gallery opening February 20th in Atlanta, and a solo show at Wynn Bone Gallery in Annapolis, Maryland in October 2008.  You can keep up to date with the show schedule as I post on the blog page.

The work is still based on my original concept of painting spaces and architecture. The narrative lies in the mind of the viewer, while the imagery and paint manipulation leads the eye. Please check out the artwork on the art page see some of the pages in my current galleries. Links are provided on the home page.