My background?

That’s what is behind the foreground and middleground.

All sarcasm aside, I was born in 1970 and this is part of what shaped my world view. My earliest memories consist of the early Saturday morning cartoons of Aquaman, Spiderman, and the Super Friends, as well as, Sid and Marty Krofts’ psychedelic worlds. The stage was set early on for fanciful beliefs, made even stronger and set in stone, with the arrival of Star Wars. I tried to move things with my mind every day in elementary school. Watching turned into reading from the Iliad to Tolkien to Shakespeare - all the stories were reproduced in the format for the masses known as comic books. I was hooked. I loved the stories as well as the art. Now I had a goal, “To become a comic book artist.” I drew every day. There was one point in time when I was caught drawing in a high school literature class, the teacher took my work, threw it out and said, “You’ll never be an artist!”

Never tell a creative person that they can’t do something, because they will, even if it’s out of spite. After graduation, I enrolled in Cleveland Institute of Art and was accepted with notice that I was on Art Warning—a probation period so to speak—as my work wasn’t up to snuff. Two years into the program I had to make a decision as to what I wanted to major in, since my enrollment I had seen much more than I thought was possible, and my eyes were opened to the possibilities of ‘art’. I had to choose between commercial and applied art, and I choose commercial. This is where I wanted to be, not an average illustrator of comic books, but an artist. Someone who could exist in both worlds—a graphic artist, or specifically an illustrator, that worked on graphic novels rather than trade paperbacks.


After graduating from the Cleveland Institute of Art (1994) I have found employment in various aspects of the design industry for many years - continuing even today including...

Designs of Distinction, The Cleveland Institute of Art, Haverfield Annual Report,
The Inter-Museum Council of Northwest Ohio, The Cleveland Medical Library Association, Spooky Girl Studios, Hill Guitar (Dean USA), Tasmanian Freight, StarBelly Productions, North American Container Inc., Southwest Scenic Group,
Al Collins School of Design and Technology, Desert Living Magazine, Moving Pictures Magazine, Print Time AZ

As well as having had the opportunity to show in a few galleries such as Moonlight Gallery, Art One Gallery Inc. and The Herberger Gallery.

Currently I’m back to working on various side projects (mostly for my own enjoyment) and am hopeing to continue in the arts with public showings soon.

Thanks, Erik