Aaron John Gregory

Visual Art – San Francisco

I\'m the singer, guitarist, and main brain behind the critically acclaimed, progressive, sludge rock band, GIANT SQUID. I\'m also an aspiring cartoonist and illustrator, having studied at The Kubert School in New Jersey, and currently at the Academy of Art University in my home town of San Francisco, pursuing a BFA in Illustration. My main focus is comic book illustration, and so much of my body of work revolves around this type of sequential story telling and its traditional use of line art and digital coloring. But, as I am exposed to more and more traditional painting methods at AAU, my outlets for visual expression have greatly widened, and I eagerly attack canvases as much as comic boards these days. Just as the ocean and all things aquatic inspire the majority of my band\'s creative material, so does it inspire many of the stories and concepts that I convey in my illustrations. I have a long, professional history in aquarium sciences and SCUBA diving, and so I bring that passion and knowledge for aquatic realms together with my visual art as much as I do with my music. Beyond my obsession with the ocean, I have a life long love for all natural history, especially anything prehistoric. I cherish my home state of California and its history, especially the Old West. I\'m also a Nipponophile, loving most anything Japanese. All of this equally enthralls and inspires me, and finds its way into my work, either esthetically or contextually.