What can I say? I live, breath and play art and music. I’ve been creating visual art since I was a kid and played in bands since high school. I work professionally as a designer/illustrator for Mamone & Partners. I play guitar for the band HEAVY EARLY. I also create all visual art ie: album cover, web site, t-shirts, posters etc…for the band. I’ve produced a fairly extensive body of work over the years, from large scale, outdoor murals to editorial illustrations for magazines and prop building for the National Ballet of Canada.
I started mural painting in the early 90′s when my good buddy Dudeman and I were commissioned to paint the Gasworks, in Toronto. That led to a year at Murad Communications, painting photo-realistic advertising murals for clients such as Levi’s, Warner Brothers and Oakley.
In the late 90′s I put down my airbrush to pick up a keyboard and mouse and take on digital medium. Beginning my career with my father’s design/communication studio Mamone & Partners, I fine tuned my skills in photo-retouching, layout & design, illustration and web design.
Where does the music come in? It’s always been a part of me, since I first picked up a guitar in grade school and self taught myself “Iron Man” and “Smoke on the Water”. I grew up in a musical household. That’s not to say my parents were musicians, but music lovers. I remember playing around the house while ma & pa were creating fantastic culinary masterpieces for never ending dinner parties they threw, while blaring the Stones, Beatles, Sly & the Family Stone or Pink Floyd, Phoebe Snow, Queen and Rufus on the stereo. I would hang around, inhale, watch and listen to all the amazing smells, colours and interesting guests that would arrive each night.
Once I hit high school and began my education of sensory testing (pharmaceuticals and all) I began to get a euphoric feeling whenever I heard Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, or Ritchie Blackmore paint my mind with what I thought were impossible sounds no human could create with just a simple guitar. That was the it! I needed to become a ROCK STAR! LOL!!!
With a few bands later and a high school education, I decided to get back to what I did best, visual arts. I went back to school after 3 years of bar bands and broken dreams and entered the Ontario College of Art to pursue a career in Graphic Arts. I went from figure drawing & oil painting, to typography and art direction, but finally settled on illustration. I felt more comfortable creating the visuals rather than the ideas. While loitering the halls I bumped into my old friend Nicholas Sinclair, who was fine tuning his skills in fine art on the other side of the atrium. I always loved his mural and graffiti work and said “we have to work together some day”. Well, low and behold, my first commission out of college was the “Wall of Rock” at the world famous Gasworks bar. And, I knew just the artist I wanted to partner with to get the job done. This was the start of a long standing and mutually respectful working relationship with the DUDEMAN!
After a year with Murad Communications, painting murals for advertising, I moved into the designers chair and began my career with Mamone & Partners. I started with photo-retouching and then graduated to design & layout. Having grown up in a graphic arts studio as a child, I’ve always been intrigued with innovative design and typography that stood out amongst the usual bad marketing we’re all surrounded with daily. As challenging and exciting as the design world became, I couldn’t shake my love for live rock n roll. So, with the help of my beautiful wife, I was convinced to pick up my guitar and start playing again. As I re-acquainted myself with those six strings and amplification, my former drummer Brad Gerstl called on me to get involved with his new project, Heavy Early. It was a no brainer, I had to start rockin’ again!