I guess it was pretty obvious that I was going to become an artist at an early age. I vividly remember being about 4 or 5 years old and drawing pictures of Indiana Jones and Darth Vader on the backs of deposit slips while my mother was waiting on line at the bank. Soon after I discovered comic books, and Spider-Man and Wolverine among others made frequent appearances in all of my schoolbooks. Then when I was in high school I chanced to visit the Frank Frazetta Gallery in East Stroudsburg, PA while vacationing in the poconos with my family, and seeing his paintings up close like that made a tremendous impression on me. Whatever it was that he was, I knew that was what I wanted to be some day. So I have been working on that ever since.

I was accepted into Syracuse University's School of Visual and Performing Arts, where I majored in Illustration and studied with their amazing faculty. Professors Murray Tinkelman, Bob Dacey, John Thompson, Yvonne Buchanan and Roger DeMuth were all great teachers and great people. I am especially grateful to John for all his help. He was the one who first convinced me to go to Italy for a semester during my junior year, where I discovered that I loved traveling and learning about history and other cultures. After being exposed to so many great masterpieces, and recognizing that there is in some cases a tremendous lack of understanding about them, I became interested in art history and theory, especially regarding illustration and storytelling with art.

After graduating from Syracuse, I got a job working as an art director and worked on a few different magazines. I also began my career as a freelance illustrator, and managed to win 2nd place in Strathmore Artist Paper's National Illustration Competition in 2000, after which my work appeared in The Artist Magazine, Watercolor: An American Artist Magazine and Watercolor Magic.

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Me about 3 or 4 years old in my Spidey costume.
Me in Ireland, March 2002