My Story
For forty years, advertising was my life. Twenty of those were spent at the absolute top of the food chain as an international, award-winning Executive Creative Director. I was pulling in a six-figure salary, running massive global accounts, and thriving in the high-stakes, hyper-competitive creative engines of Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, and Phoenix. I loved it.
Then, in 2010, a move to Fresno changed everything. For the first time in my life, I found myself trapped in a professional environment that quite literally sucked my creative soul dry. It was a daily, suffocating torture. (That was just my experience, and as they say, "your mileage may vary," but for me? It was hell.)
I was completely miserable, drowning in it. But here’s the unbelievable part: my wife, Lynn, saw the toll it was taking on my life. Without a single job offer on the table, without a freelance gig lined up, and with absolutely no safety net to replace my income, she looked at me and said, “Get the f**k out of there now! Please.”
So, I walked away from the security of a major career into total financial uncertainty. That terrifying cliff-dive is where this journey actually begins.
Lynn urged me to start drawing again, a muscle I hadn’t used in years. At first, the terror and darkness of what I’d just been through bled onto the canvas. I painted heavy, foreboding pieces that captured the feeling of being trapped in a dark room. It was honest, but it wasn't cathartic. It wasn't healing me.
Seeking some kind of meditation, I sat down with a simple pencil one afternoon and stared at my old Stan Smith tennis shoes. They were beat up—just like me. The leather was scarred and scuffed—just like me. But they still had a lot of life left in them. Once again, just like me.
When Lynn saw my drawing, she didn’t just like it—she framed it and hung it right by our front door for the world to see. It hit me right in the chest. It was that pure, childhood feeling of having your art taped to the refrigerator. For the first time in a very long time, I felt genuinely happy.
That realization changed my trajectory. Today, I create highly rendered drawings of personal, nostalgic items rooted in my childhood growing up on the St. Clair River in Algonac, Michigan. I call it “Happy Art” because it earned that name. It came out of the dark. It’s simple to appreciate, easy to understand, and it spreads the exact joy that saved me. I hope it brings a piece of that happiness to you, too.
