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When did you first become interested in illustration?
I started drawing when I was about 4 or 5 and noticed the attention I was getting from what I came up with. That helped encourage me to keep doing it. And since both of my grandmothers are very artistic, though not professionally, they really enlightened me to the art world in general, showing me books on Matisse and Picasso for example. They also pushed me to start painting. One moment that really stands out in my mind that held a great deal of inspiration was when my father took me to the Dali museum in Florida when I was about 8. I remember standing so small in front of his massive paintings and being completely blown away by them. I had never seen anything like them before. The subjects of my drawings started to change a bit after that point. I kept drawing and painting all through grade school and high school, both at home and in art classes.

What about your formal training?
After a couple years at Montana State University with no specific major, I decided I really needed to be involved in the art and design world. Their art program was simply not specialized enough, plus I was sick of living in the middle of nowhere, so I decided to go to Parsons here in New York. I originally had planned on majoring in Graphic Design because I thought it would be more practical than Illustration (which in some ways it is). I hadn't even decided on my major until literally one minute before I put my college application in the mail. I checked "Illustration"...

How would you describe your style?
To describe my work in terms of style and medium proves to be difficult since I tend to approach each project more like a designer than those illustrators who have a very specific style niche. Good designers don't use the same font, color scheme, paper, or concept approach on every assignment. They analyze the needs of the client and adjust their own aesthetic tendencies towards reaching a concept and tangible execution. Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast are two designers who are also illustrators, and I greatly admire them for their ability to blur the line between the two disciplines. They both have several sub-categories to their illustration styles, but they are able to pair them with the different design sensibilities of a project in a consistently successful way.

I attempt to approach my work in a similar manner. The context of where the artwork is seen, the type of client commissioning it, the concept, as well as the time frame given, help determine what medium I use and the technique applied with it. I do try to tie all my work together with a strong emphasis on drawing, concept, craft, and color. My limited, often-muted palette tends to help balance out my tightly drawn but distorted figures. I also have a tendency to include typographic design elements in my work, whether collaged in or hand-drawn. These tend to be an unavoidable consequence of my love of typography and design.

What about the work you create for galleries?
The artworks that I make for galleries and for personal use are not terribly different than my commissioned illustrations. The style and scale are about the same, but the subject matter is a bit more peculiar, sometimes even completely perplexing. They are often indistinguishable from the pages of my sketchbooks, and for one show they were even the sketchbook pages themselves. Many of my best and strangest ideas come from these pages and so I like to try to convey the raw tactility and compulsive thought into more finished work. It's a nice break from the clear concept / clear sketch world that my commercial work lives in, but I love having both to balance out my moods. I can be pretty analytical in my approach to an illustration, but my sketchbooks are anything but. They are a way for me to communicate the often strange, sometimes humorous way that I see the things and events around me.

What makes your work unique?
I can't really say that my concepts are unique as a whole since sometimes I'm commissioned to do work that requires no real concept, but more of a stylistic application. And usually my concepts on personal pieces are more abstracted and weird than what I would do for a commissioned piece. So I guess just my style of drawing and painting, and the way that I combine the two from piece to piece, is what makes my work unique.

Describe your work setting.
At the present, like so many other young New York artists, I live and work in Brooklyn. I suppose it would be fitting the clich� to suggest that I share studio space in some fantastically gritty ex-textile warehouse or cavernous garage in Williamsburg with other painters, product designers, and cabinetmakers. While that does sound endlessly inspiring and perhaps even more conducive, I instead work happily at home in my Cobble Hill apartment - where my bed, shower and wife are all merely a few steps away. Being a commercial illustrator with tight deadlines has caused my illustrations to be small enough to scan and upload to clients fairly quickly, so I certainly don't need 18-foot ceilings to house my creations. Rather, my studio resides in our 2nd bedroom with ceilings that barely pass 8 feet. It's cozy, bright red, stacked with artwork and books, and just the way I need it.

What is a typical workday for you?
Since I do all of my illustrations out of the home office, there is thankfully no commuting involved. I usually start off with a round of emailing, followed by drawing in my sketchbook. I try to draw whenever, wherever I can, but if I'm busy I try to force at least a half an hour just to get loosened up. Then I usually get started, or continue with, sketching out concepts for a project or creating the actual final piece. Once I get started I usually work until about 3am, sometimes later depending on the deadline. Sometimes I'll spend a couple weeks on one project, with barely enough time to drop down to the deli for an iced coffee. It's hard to generalize my days though, since some days I'll be working solely on promotional work, or new work for galleries. I also spend some time at various ad agencies as a freelance art director. My days are certainly not monotonous.

Do you have any personal philosophies that influence and/or are present in your art?
As far as real issues, philosophies... my work isn't very political at all, unless I was commissioned to do a political piece. I guess my work isn't really effected that much by a specific way of thinking unless I am directly hired to illustrate a specific issue, which I haven't done that much of. Perhaps my biggest personal philosophy regarding my work is that I would never do a job that supported/promoted something that I very strongly disagreed with. For instance I would never do a piece that endorsed or supported the Bush administration and their policies in any way. But I don't go out of my way to make my political stance apparent in my other work.

Where do you get inspiration from?
Most of my personal work comes from a combination of direct observation and random, strange, thoughts and ideas. A lot of what I draw is what I find around me - objects, people, environments, scenes, and images in magazines. I usually go back to old drawings and collage stuff, add paint here and there, throw some type around, and try to create a cohesive piece that combines different events and times. I often try to create a mood or concept where there wasn't one before by adding these elements. I also find endless inspiration in all of the illustration annuals, as well as design journals. Specific artists who have influenced my work include: Saul Steinberg, Magritte, Paul Klee, Seymour Chwast, Milton Glaser, Peter Blake, Dave McKean, Paul Rand and many, many others.