Biography
You really want to know about me? Okay; but honestly, you'll learn more about me by looking at the work I've done.
That's what I looked like in 1989, over on the right. I'd post a more recent picture, if I had one I liked. But I'm still recognizable. Just more gray in my hair, higher numbers on the scale, and .. ummm. I look about 25 years older, for some reason.
I was born in November of 1953, and apparently I teethed on Prismacolor pencils. I don't really remember that part.
I do remember drawing pictures when I was supposed to be taking notes, all through school. All I ever really wanted to do was draw.
In the spring of 1972, when I was a Freshman at Michigan State University, I went to my first Science Fiction convention (a Detroit Triple Fanfair.) Since I didn't have any money, poor college student that I was, I slept in the movie room, and had a single candy bar as food for the weekend.
But I couldn't help but notice that other people were selling bad pencil drawings of Mr. Spock, and getting enough money for sandwiches and pizza. So I said to myself, "Self, I can sell bad pencil drawings of Mr. Spock!" So I did. And the next thing I knew, I was a Con Artist.
Years passed, and things happened. I wound up working for Mayfair games in '83, got my first Dragon cover in '85, started doing book covers for Llewellyn, and realized that, somehow, I'd become a pro.
In 1987, knowing that Anne McCaffrey was going to be at the same con I was, I did a picture of Robinton, hoping that she would buy it. She did, and it grew into a book called People of Pern.
A few years later, I finished the Robin Wood Tarot Deck, and my career was really underway.
I just kept merrily working away, doing book and magazine covers, and the occasional piece for a con, until 1993, when I got the flu and couldn't seem to get over it.
Eventually, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. As it got gradually worse, I did less and less with traditional media, until I finally realized that I was living from pain pill to pain pill when I tried to paint, (which is no way to live) folded up the studio, and gave it all away.
For the next ten years I did all my work on the computer. I got very involved in 3D art, and even worked on several software books. I also wrote a book about Ethics, one about my Tarot deck, and one that is really a very long, involved joke about cats and gravity.
Finally, using a combination of meditation, yoga, biofeedback, and singing, I pushed the fibro into remission in early 2005.
By that time, though, I was doing a lot of things in Second Life®, which is a virtual reality platform. So now I divide my time mostly between SL™ and other projects. At the moment, the other projects are mostly web design, quilting, and playing with my Cricut cutting machine. But I have all kinds of things planned, from fiber arts to drawings to tutorials to books, for when I'm doing better.
If you'd like to keep up with what I'm doing on a day to day basis, I have a couple of blogs and a Twitter account. You can find links to all of them in the News section on my home page.
Thanks for reading this, and I hope you enjoy wandering around the site!