BORN: Barberton, Ohio, September 26, 1968

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:
Mirage Studio, Shaker Heights, Ohio, October 1989
Daily Double Nightclub, Akron, Ohio, February 1991
Lollapalooza Festival, Akron, Ohio, August 1991
Cross-Culture Fair, UCSD, San Diego, California, March 1999
Artwalk, San Diego, California, April 1999
San Diego Art Institute, September 2000
The Otherside, September 2002

EDUCATION: Self taught

IDEAS THAT INFLUENCE MY WORK: Political issues, music, movies, books, comic books, the media, cultural issues, women and children issues, magazines, and the beauty and ugliness in everyday life.

ARTISTIC INFLUENCES: Ralph Steadman, Bill Sienkiewicz, R. Crumb, Rick Griffin, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Joan Miro, Paul Klee, Salvadore Dali, Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Bacon, Roy Lichtenstein, Kenny Scharf, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Marc Chagall and many outsider artists.

MY STYLES: Punk, experimental, fluxus, art brut, abstract, abstract expressionism, pop art.

"Art is either plagiarism or revolution." --- Paul Gauguin

When you check out my art, you might wonder where I get my inspiration. My work is eclectic. Uncanny. Exciting. Daring. I grew up in the rural midwest in a household that was abusive and not supportive of me or my talents. Every day was like living in a warzone. I didn't know who to trust or why I should or shouldn't trust them. The only thing stable in my life was my artwork. I can remember drawing pictures of naked people with my crayons and giving those pictures to my grandparents. I think my
Grandma kept those drawings until she died last year.

By most definitions, I am considered an outsider artist. What is that, you ask? Michel Thevoz, Curator of the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne has written the following:

''Art Brut'', or ''outsider art'', consists of works produced by people who for various reasons have not been culturally indocrinated or socially conditioned. They are all kinds of dwellers on the fringes of society. Working outside fine art ''system'' (schools, galleries, museums and so on), these people have produced, from the depths of their own personalities and for themselves and no one else, works of outstanding originality in concept, subject and techniques. They are works which owe nothing to tradition or fashion.

I sufferer from Major Depressive Disorder, Anxiety, Dissociative Disorder (though not the multiple personality type) and Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. All of this often peeks through into my work. People have told me that my work is disturbing. It should be. It's my insides you are looking at. It's how I've survived my past. I first learned to release the ORGANIZED CHAOS that lurks inside of me by receiving weekly assignments from a therapist a long time ago. He would tell me to paint a new picture every week and we would talk about it. Wherever you are, Glenn Sprunger, THANK YOU for giving me that gift.

When asked at the age of 5 what I wanted to be, I always said I wanted to be an artist. With no college art classes under my belt, I exhibited and sold for the first time at the age of 18. At the age of 22, my artwork was one of thirteen artists in Ohio to be handpicked by Jane's Addiction lead singer, Perry Ferrell, to be displayed on the first-ever Lollapalooza tour. Since then, my artwork has been purchased many times and hangs in homes and businesses all over the world. But most importantly, it lives in me.

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