My Story

I started drawing mermaids when I was in the fourth grade - I suppose that was my first art obsession. I loved creating color palettes for them along with different outfits and fun patterns.

Later in the seventh grade, Disney’s The Little Mermaid came out, and of course I loved it! We had an assignment in art class to choose an image, draw a grid on top of it and then scale it up with another grid on a larger piece of paper. I did such an amazing job and got a ton of attention (who doesn’t love some attention?), I decided right then and there that I would pursue a career in art.

All through high school I was known as an artist, always being asked to draw something for someone. I don’t even know how many random people have a cherished, original NH drawing sitting somewhere in their house.

The first time I made money with my art was in high school. It started when I won a competition for painting a car, literally painting artwork on a large car. I airbrushed it and got first place. That led to several commissions and then during the last two summers of high school I did portraits and airbrushing at the local amusement park, Geauga Lake.

I attended the Cleveland Institute of Art and studied Illustration. While there, I got a job in web design and continued down that path. I now own my own successful web design company, Smack Happy Design. We’re a team of artists creating web sites that really capture the essence of a person or business, helping them make a connection and win business.

Historically, my art has been very realistic. I suffer from what I like to call “the accurate police”. As I’m creating from an image, I worry about them coming along and checking my work compared to the photo source. When I started doing the abstract octopuses I was finally able to tell the accurate police to go ef themselves. Now I’m free, I can create whatever I want and change whatever I want! In many cases I’m taking an image that I took and making it better in the new art form, usually watercolors or acrylics. I’ve also recently gotten into pet portraits.

My world is incomplete without art!