Ancalagon was my “long meeting” sketchbook. The images are the product of excruciating boredom. I sometimes called it, “The Book Of The Corporate Dead”.

 Fish, as a subject, have always been fascinating to me. They are such alien creatures when compared to mammals. I love the scales, though.

 What artist doesn’t consider mortality and death at one point or another?

In the fourth grade, I used to draw skulls with wings on notebook paper while other kids played tetherball on the playground. Is that weird?

Anyway, The Flying Skull has been an icon that has stayed with me all my life.

 Ernst Fuchs and Mati Klarwein, of the Vienna School Of Fantastic Realism, were huge influences in my 20’s. Fuchs’ paintings of Cherubs, especially, were mind-boggling and much beloved. I absolutely encourage you to look them up.

 Wings have also been a life-time obsession. I struggled for years to create, from memory, convincing and dramatic wings on all sorts of random stuff.

 Often when I am drawing, I’ll just lightly doodle some random scribble, and start filling in details. It makes for some interesting, and often disturbing, images.

 I drew this while waiting for a school concert to begin.

When I was 12, my family moved to Missouri, and I was introduced to tornadoes. Perversely, I found them beautiful and terrible, but not particularly frightening. I’ve painted and drawn them many, many times.

My earliest drawings and paintings were of trees, and I’ve continued to depict them all my life. I believe that the way trees grow is a lovely metaphor for a human life.