I grew up a wildling in rural Michigan. The unique biome I grew up in blessed me with deep respect and awe for the natural world. I spent all my time outside hunting for snakes, identifying plants, making potions, chasing rainbows and catching birds, making poppets, looking for imaginary beasts, reading comics anddrawing my favorite comic book characters.

I double majored in art and environmental biology in Michigan, then attended Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon, where I studied painting and drawing, but was robbed of my BFA when my student loan company rejected funding for my thesis year. This turn of events led to my exodus from Portland and my epic bicycle adventure of over 1,100 miles through Oregon, Washington, Northern California, then Wisconsin and Minnesota. Ask me about it sometime.

These days, my interests are in illustrative realism, realism and portraiture, botanical work, and developing my paintings into tattoos to try to advance tattooing as an art form.