I’m an artist by nature and an art director by profession.

I’ve been making things for as long as I can remember, and I’ve spent most of my adult life getting paid to do it.

My first art job came when I was about ten, painting Warhammer miniatures at a local hobby shop in the late ’80s. Grown men were paying a kid to paint their armies, which felt like a pretty good deal. By then I was already obsessed with drawing, fantasy art, comic books, and artists like Frank Frazetta and Arthur Adams.

I grew up in a fairly rough neighborhood in southern Arizona, where the kid who sat around drawing all day didn’t exactly fit in. Graffiti changed that. It gave me a way to be part of the world around me without giving up being an artist. I filled sketchbooks with lettering, characters, and color, making all the little decisions that eventually turn into visual instinct. A lot of the art director I became started there.

Toward the end of high school, my family moved overseas. I lived in Phuket, Thailand, and later Mazatlán, Mexico, with travel throughout Southeast and East Asia and a brief stretch in Guam along the way. It taught me early that there are a lot of different ways to see the same thing.

In 1999, I met my wife, Amy, who pushed me to stop treating art as something I loved and start believing it could actually become my career. I left my job as a cook, started a small creative services business, and never really looked back.

From there, my work took me through painting, illustration, graphic design, animation, concept art, games, apparel, art direction, and creative leadership. Along the way, my personal work has been shown in galleries and featured in books and magazines. I’ve been fortunate to make things people genuinely connected with, and I’m proud of that.

Today, much of my professional life is spent directing and guiding other creatives. I love solving visual problems and shaping the bigger picture, but the best part of the job is mentoring—helping an artist or designer grow in their craft, see a problem differently, or realize what they’re capable of.

I’ve never stopped needing to make my own work, though. I still paint. I still draw. I still fill sketchbooks and chase ideas just because they interest me.

And recently, I added writing to that list.

I finished my first novel, The Key, and I’m shaping the story that comes next. After decades in visual art, writing is still very new territory for me, and I’m enjoying being a beginner again—making mistakes, figuring out what works, and finding a new way into the worlds and characters that have always lived in my head.

I live in the Texas Hill Country with Amy, our two daughters, and our dog, Ranger.