Born in Chicago October 31,1971. It seemed I was accident prone from an early age. I smashed and broke my foot with a large brick, had my hand torn open on a chain link fence, almost died of a fever and had a pot of scolding hot water fall on me and literally melt the shirt off my body. The following months were spent in the very dark and depressing burn ward of a hospital I cannot remember the name of. All this before I turned age five but hey, it was the seventies, things were crazy then. Somehow I survived and spent the ensuing years playing on the streets of a neighborhood that is today called Wicker Park. What I carried away from those "crazy" first years is that life is simultaneously happy and sad. Joy and sorrow more often than not are reluctant bedfellows, life in the big city is a sea of troubled laughter and the truth is it is always sink or swim.The things I draw and paint are like that. I have always loved to draw. My ability to do so was my most faithful play thing and my deliverer from many a boring afternoon. Despite this it took a while for me to really be comfortable being an artist. There always seemed to be something presumptuous about such declarations, but I I got over it. I am what I am. I continue to live and work in the city that is as much a part of me as I am a part of it. Its people, its streets, its train rides and alley's never fail to inspire me. The things I draw and a paint, I draw and paint because I must, if I do not I would drown in an ocean of unfulfilled aspirations.