Working on Dominion in 2006.

New Worlds

In the 1980s I was on a personal journey of discovery. I got my GED and graduated from college with a degree in English literature. I moved north to attend graduate school and to an MA in English. I was exposed to history, new ideas, new ways of thinking, culminating in a tour of Europe's great art museums and a three month stay in Perugia, Italy, in 1990. For a poor kid from Southern Oregon, the journey was transformational."

It came at a cost. After ten years of marriage, I got divorced. I moved away from all my childhood roots. I moved away from the Barks's -- living hours away and the demands of grad school made visiting difficult. But through it all I painted. By the time I started graduate school in 1987, I had stopped painting Disney subjects. I began experimenting with using fine-art cartoons to explore non-Disney themes: religion, history, myth, allegory. It seemed that anything was possible.