Visual Art – Pittsburgh
It started in high school, with a portrait inspired by a Queensryche song. I didn't tell anyone in my AP painting class in the year 2001 that the pastel nun with a knife drawn over newspaper clippings was meant to evoke the song "Spreading the Disease" off my then (and still) favorite album: 1988's "Operation Mindcrime." I let them think that my inspiration was more profound and the drawing was well received.
I was less subtle in college art classes where my answer to every assignment was a portrait of Gene Simmons or a digital evocation of an obscure Faith No More Song or a bizarre and ill-advised whittled staircase plastered with nails and the remnants of Jack Daniels labels that was meant as an incomprehensible tribute to the livers lost to rock n' roll. The culmination of my college art career was a Kiss concert marionette show that was my greatest risk and yet the best received.
After college, I continued painting portraits of my favorite rock stars before expanding to movie villains, pop culture enfants terribles, and the real-life bad guys that simultaneously fascinate and repulse us.
I've been painting now for more than 20 years, mostly in oil on canvas.
I'm also the author of the 2012 horror-comedy novel "Working Stiffs."