The first thing I ever Photoshopped was a guy's head onto the body of a donkey. Trust me, he deserved it. This was back in '96, and I was in a band. This guy was telling people how terrible our music was, and the only weapon of defense I had was a computer with Photoshop 3.0. I don't want to admit how long I spent that night, learning how to use layers and cutting things out, searching around the still-young internet to find the most perfectly-perfect picture of an ass, but by the time I was done, I not only had our next gig poster, but also something had awakened inside of me.

Over the next few years I would finish college, bounce around from job to job, get married, have some kids, collect a few cats. In my spare time I would take pictures, and I would practice with digital art. Not all of my work was in the passive aggressive field of pin-the-head-on-the-donkey, but I did do it once or twice. In 2002 I landed a gig as an obituary editor for a daily newspaper, and part of that job was photo restoration for the recently deceased. Every day I learned something new. I started to read books and take classes on using Adobe products. I learned about Illustrator. I begin practicing with drawing things freehand.

I think I did my first cat portrait in '03. I don't have it anymore, but it was a picture of a cat on a bicycle. A few people saw it and said. 'You should sell those.'

So I did. Or I tried, at least.

I should probably mention here that I collect books. I have a lot of them. Probably more than most sane people would have. I would go to library sales and buy bags of them just to have them. Sometimes I wouldn't go to the sales, but to the dumpsters behind the library. Oftentimes the books I would find there would be beyond saving. Broken spines, missing pages, spilled upon by unspeakable things. I would leave those behind. Then I would think about that, and I would go back the next day and save the pages. I had a stack of discarded pages, most of them from obsolete text books, taller than me.

One day I saw a painting by an unknown French painter, and it was painted not on canvas, but on old newsprint. I was surprised at the depth that the newsprint added to the painting. That gave me an idea....