There is a collectable aspect to my paintings, an appeal to the seekers of kitsch and the gatherers of nostalgia, for toys, comic books, cartoons, an intellectual search for the detrius of lost childhoods. But there's an emotional aspect as well. Childhood can be scary. Silly things, like what's hiding under the bed, or in the darkness. And serious things as well: What if we don't have a place to live? Or what if the power's been shut off? What if we don't have enough to eat? Fear lives in the background, where sometimes, grown-ups cannot see. But we see it. We can't unsee it.
Working on the underpainting for Despair, August 2024.
I see the world through the lens of popular culture: video games, movies, comic books, toys, cartoons, and animation. While I’m often grouped with the pop surrealists and low brow artists, I’ve been painting longer than any of them, having started painting fine-art cartoons in oils in 1977, almost a half century ago now. My inspiration, and mentor starting in the 1980s, was the Disney master Carl Barks, who taught me the value of craft: composition, lighting, color harmony, and narrative. Storytelling, for me, is the most important aspect of my art, and the element that makes my work different from that of other pop artists: I prefer visual gags over symbolism, clever juxtaposition of characters and props over meta commentary, in-your-face meaning over abstract ideas. Every now and then, I paint a landscape or portrait to keep myself grounded, but even my portraits contain Norman Rockwell style narratives. My first love, however, will always be fine-art cartoons, finding new ways of using the iconography of popular culture to explore the human condition. What better way to see the world, than through the wide eyes of a child, where fantasy is real, the surreal is commonplace, and every day begins with a sense of wonder.