Writing about oneself is a tremendously difficult endeavor.  For frequent visitors to my site you will know that I have procrastinated for almost two years in addressing this particular area of exploration.  I suppose it helps, in some way, to be able to grasp where an artist is coming from.  

So we can start with the fundamental information.  I was born in Texas and have lived here my whole life.  I come from an intellectual family.  Dad was an engineer and mom is a chemist/biologist/physicist.  You can only imagine what sort of dinnertime conversations we had.  I have one older brother who is currently at university studying maritime law and marine biology. It seems that a family such as mine would not be too excited about their child becoming an artist, but in reality they have been amazingly supportive.  

I didn't actually pick up a paint brush and paint until my first year at college.  I was spending a lot of time with three incredibly talented people, Ardencia Hall, Ben Pascoe and Rob Kendall at their apartment which was known as Soho.  Painting seemed very natural to me.  As time went by I decided to buy some canvas and see what I could come up with.  My early works are heavily inspired by Rene Magritte, the Belgian Surrealist.  

I only painted in this style for a year or so when I decided that I should make art with my two best friends.  Thus we became a collaborative.  The KJT Art Factory.  In order for this to work however we needed a style that would be consistent.  So I began looking at Warhol's works and colors and methods.  Of course silk-screening was out of the question financially.  So instead we came up with other methods like tracing  and Xeroxing.  

The first set of works we did were a sort of test run to smooth out the kinks.  To keep it easy, we based the series on the characters and actors from Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place (which we were sadly and completely addicted to watching at the time).  Here is one of the works from the 90210 experiment:

Of course, all collaboratives have their downfalls.  Ours was the fact that I was doing 95% of the painting.  We had established a method where any of the three members could veto an idea if they didn't like it.  Apparently democracy isn't the best method for art.  I came up with an idea for a series of works on paper and jumped right into them.  When they were finished I showed them to my two partners in crime and they were not pleased.  The works did not fit in with "our" style and they vetoed them.  I wasn't pleased.  I had worked long and hard on them and I told them that I would sign my own name to them.

The works in question are the Elements which can be seen in my Works On Paper section.  They are really the first independent, mature works that are exclusively mine.  They also were the end of the KJT Art Factory.