"Today, illustration is where my true interest in art lies. Back in the autumn of 1995, when I connected to the Internet for the first time, I discovered a world with perfect avenues to express, and promote myself, while simultaneously re-defining my art and therefore, ultimately my destiny. There had opened a new world in space, and I wasted no time in venturing forward, like a pioneer explorer in the wild west, the world wide web was a huge frontier with endless mines, filled with opportunity for those with vision, even clouded or obscure vision.

I'm in an ongoing struggle to find a perfect balance between fine art and illustration, where my art is not written off or labelled as cartoons. Though I do admit that when I began focusing on illustration back in '96, much of my work was in fact just that, cartoons or comic book styled splash page or cover art. Cartoons were a natural starting point for me, to begin depicting erotica in my art.

Back in 1978, as my teen years were just getting underway my personal interest in illustration and story-telling lead to the development of a comic book series titled "Heds (sic) In Space" which followed the antics of a few fun loving, uncultured head cases and their dog as they continually searched out the next party and opportunity to get high (loosely inspired by Gilbert Shelton's Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers). It also featured some pretty girls and a lot of rock 'n' roll. This crazy series lasted until 1985. Many of the nonsensical stories loosely mirrored the real life escapades of me and my friends. I still think about those characters warmly, and have to smile at them (despite how crudely drawn my art was in those days).

Jump again to 1995/96, and my discovery of the Internet, and I began developing my illustration skills. Cartoony looking erotic drawings, and outrageous fetish-type images is what I created and began posting onto adult and softcore porn newsgroups. To my pleasant surprise, I began to receive positive feedback and encouragement which spawned further images. Before I knew it, some folks online were sending me fantasy and image ideas, so my confidence in this new genre of art was growing. I never had childhood dreams of becoming an erotic artist, but the attention my work was receiving told me that I was onto something, at least it could be something. There was strong interest amongst the public for this genre of art. I was very much enjoying what I was now drawing, this new direction of depicting sexy girls, after all, as a red-blooded guy with very liberal beliefs and boundaries and unabashed borders (I'm a free bird whose not shy about and non-judgmental of sexuality/sexual practices or kink, and one who loves edgy ideas or art with guts), it seemed I was the perfect man for this job. Here I was drawing the physical beauty of sexy girls and highlighting or exaggerating their curvaceous attributes was no chore, not boring or redundant, as a matter of fact I found it inspiring. I soon found work online with a website to post and promote my art.

Like I said my early work in this genre was quite cartoony (see sample "Maise), and after a year and a half I realized it, and longed to stay within the erotic art genre, but attempted to develop other, more sophisticated styles that would not type-cast me as a cartoonist. What I attempted to do was create some erotic pen and ink drawings, inspired by my years taking life drawing in college. A sample of this result can be seen here, titled "Here Comes The Sun" or "Untitled Figure." In May of 2005 Playboy Television aired a full segment on my erotic art including an on screen interview for it's program Sexcetera.

In my family, art as a career was not particularly encouraged either. Nevertheless, I followed my heart. Art had always offered me a unique, romantic and obscure vision, endless inspiration, creativity, a vivid imagination and a path in life. A Manhattan cityscape themed painting (acrylic on canvas) of mine was published into a poster (offset lithography) in late 1980. It's depiction was coarse and whose style was terribly folk-artish with whimsical, humorous and naive attributes. Yet those qualities were it's appeal and much later I heard it hung in the famous Joe Allen restaurant in NYC throughout the 1980s. The poster is scarce now and long out of print. I also had another poster published in 1982, the Toronto poster. It was a knock-off of Saul Steinberg's New Yorker poster. It sold very well, until Toronto built the Skydome, and I suppose a portrait of Toronto without the Skydome had diminished appeal. So that poster is also long out of print. However, while watching David Cronenberg's film Crash a few years back, I noticed it hanging prominently on a wall in the background of an office setting. The Toronto poster art was also reproduced on t-shirts and sold commercially throughout the 1980s.

I've always enjoyed drawing the human figure. I learned life drawing in high school and continued with courses at OCA and later briefly at The Toronto School Of Art. In the 1990s, I had 4 more fine art posters published (by Canadian Posters International). One was a still life (watercolor/ink) titled Indian Blanket. It sold quite well and later was commissioned to create 3 abstract acrylic paintings for poster reproduction. Until about 1996, the major focus of my art was fine art painting in acrylics, oils, gouache and conte drawings. Subjects included still life, and landscape. I do not like thinking or talking much about this time in my life, as I felt I was drifting from style to style, never perfecting any, experimenting and trying to learn from my experience, but it wasn't happening fast enough for my liking, all the while being pushed and pulled by my hostile siblings, who I had the misfortune of working with as they each vied for power in a family business. The only good things to really come from the turbulent decade after college (approximately. 1987 to 1997), is that I proved to myself that I had a true devotion to my art, I had perseverance while my work was developing to higher levels of refineness, and tangibly my favorite Black Christmas paintings. Perseverance is talent. That is also the period in which I believe I've evolved into a man, and, from a lost artist to one whose finally found his path."