Photoshop is an amazing tool. For about two to three years I took some painstaking time to immerse myself into using this tool to develop these images. Most of the images you see here started as ‘stream of conscious’ pen and ink drawings on paper (click here to see those). The result was this series of unique surrealist imagery. I was eventually was featured in Photoshop Creative magazine for these.

I was asked to create a “sister-brand system” for the Decagon and Steward Asset Management financial firms. Based in New York, Decagon provides investment management consulting and comes from a variety of disciplines in the asset management industry. Steward Asset Management is an anchor investor to private equity and opportunistic asset managers circling a Fund I launch.

The system I created enabled the two teams to use standard graphic assets across different presentations, business and promotional collateral.

I designed and art directed their websites. Visit below:

Steward Asset Management | Decagon Advisors

I storyboarded and art directed the Steward video promo’s.

Vision | Anchor Partner

View samples from the branding I designed and managed.

These drawings result from a ‘stream of conscious’ approach. I never actually “plan” what I would draw when I take this approach. I more react to the pen hitting the paper. People often ask, “what do these mean?” and I honestly couldn’t say though when I later come up with titles for them I end up interpretting/creating meaning for them. Check out my photoshop imagery here. Many of these drawings went on to become more developed ideas.

Also, if you’d like to see more of these click here.

In 2013 I created a blog called “The Daily White Board” where I posted one white board drawing, sketch, doodle or idea a day for an entire year. I achieved this goal and accumulated hundreds of thousands of page views as I did it. The graphics here were inspired by the raw art that was portrayed on the Daily White Board blog. The numbered days under the graphics signify the days that the original drawings were created.

CHECK OUT MY ILLUSTRATION PAGE

I was a painting major and a music minor at Syracuse University. I remember being surprised by many people telling me that I needed to “choose one” of these disciplines (even professors!). To me the kind of thought and effort that went into doing these activities was the same. Painting was visual problem solving and music was auditory problem solving. But the underlying train of thought was the same. That is, if you were able to conceive of these things on a more abstract level. It wasn’t until years later, when I became a designer that I realized I’d been employing “design-thinking” the whole time without realizing it.

Check out my blues album on this site to get an idea of what I can do musically.

A few years ago I started rewriting songs that I thought might sound good on the piano. I didn’t have any goal in mind on where I was going with this. I basically just enjoyed doing it as an outlet from my hectic life as a father, husband and professional designer. Most of the songs I play here are old favorites of mine like Still Crazy After All These Years and We Are the Champions. But there are a couple of older numbers like That’s Life and When You Gotta Good Friend that harken back to jazz and blues time periods. After messing around with these songs for a few months I started recording them. I’d listen to them and I’d use the recordings to make improvements and tweaks. The songs are all done in one take. There are no overdubs. I sing and play everything you’re hearing at the same time from start to finish. They’re all live performances so mistakes are included! (which is unheard of in the world of music production these days). After a while (and after the recordings started piling up) I figured I’d make the collection into an album to see if anyone else out there might like them. So here it is! I hope you like the reinterpretation of these songs as much I enjoyed recording them! And for any of you “musical perfectionists” out there… please forgive the mistakes!!! There may come a time when I take these to a professional production level but I’m quite there yet!

This series of medical illustrations was done for LUNGevity, a Sloan Kettering group devoted to improving the lives of patients with lung cancer. I’m particularly proud of these because I’d never done anything like them so I had no sample drawings to show that I could do them (and I certainly wasn’t going to show them my surrealist drawings!). I remember that I spoke to Flywheel (the agency who was hired by LUNGevity) on a Friday. When the art director asked to see my book I told him that I didn’t have any material that even resembled what they needed. So I said I’d do some samples over the weekend free of charge and if they approved I’d do the work. I figured since it was the end of the day and they were in a pinch he’d go for it. He did and I landed the entire account. As you scroll through these you’ll notice that there were many versions of the same drawings. The work needed to be generic, maintain a consistent style across the entirety of the collection of drawings. I made this happen almost instantly.

CHECK OUT MY ILLUSTRATION PAGE

These drawings were done in Adobe illustrator. I experimented doing illustration using Illustrator as a tool for quite a while before I eventually got a Wacom tablet and moved over to Photoshop as my prime Adobe tool for illustrating. Illustrator is still great mind you. You just get different results depending on the tool, sometimes drastically different.

I love to draw and paint. I wish I could do it more than I do! When I’m not doodling away and I find some time to execute something a bit more developed I delve into more advanced drawing exercises.

In 2015 APEX (The All Payments Expo) needed help encouraging people in the payments industry to find meaning through engaging with unlikely partners. Prepaid card businesses amongst others in the sector found themselves victimized by the disruption of Apple Pay hitting their markets. In order to attract attendees to the event we created a series of ads that appeared in industry magazines, digital downloads and brochure collateral. I assisted in brainstorming for concepts, writing copy and doing all design materials. I selected stock imagery, used Photoshop to manipulate and modify imagery, wrote copy and placed text. What I liked about this job was the level of autonomy I was given.

I ran a 50 mile ultramarathon for the displaced women and children of the Democratic Republic of Congo. I raised thousands of dollars and on October 11, 2010 I accomplished the goal. I wrote a blog as I trained. Visit that here.

“I was 40 years old and was by no means a great runner. I went to my doctor to see if I was healthy enough to do this. He looked at me skeptically and said, “but you have a pot belly…” It was true. I wasn’t in good shape. Since I began my training I’ve lost almost 30 lbs (I plan to lose another 15 to 20). “

This collection of paintings is a sampling of work I did early in my career. After graduating from school I exhibited in galleries in SOHO and Jersey City. I was an apprentice to Hungarian born painter named George Peck. At that time I helped George hang artwork for his showings in conjunction with the Meredith Palmer Gallery. I also spent time with George and his wife, artist Mary Miss in Budapest for his “Composite Picture”exhibit in the National Gallery there.

When I look back at these images I recall that I was really still searching for a ‘voice’ so to speak. I used techniques from various artist movements from the first half of the 20th century like Pop Art, Surealism and Abstract expressionism.

New York City is such a tremendous environment to find immediate inspiration. As someone who’d worked in Manhattan for decades I found myself interested in certain tourist attractions on a different level. I started taking photos of scenes like the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building and I tried to give a more personal perspective to them. The structures are always magnificent but when you’ve walked by them as a part of your daily routine they fall into the background and then re-emerge.

More inspiration fodder. Doodling. Can’t recommend it enough. I’ve been doing it for years. As a matter of fact I spent an entire year posting a doodle a day on The Daily White Board blog. Doodling enables the mind to liberate itself from the restrictions of… well, of just about everything.

I spent the entirety of 2013 creating one white board drawing per day and posting them on the Daily White Board blog. It was a really great exercise. It brings to mind memories from Professor Giordano’s Issues in Art Class way back in my sophomore year in art school. He said that all kids draw, color and paint but studies show that the kids who keep drawing past the age of 13 become artists.

Many people may look at these low resolution doodles as ‘throw aways’ but I think of a lot of them as ‘little idea gems’. When using creative thinking to problem solve you never really know where an idea will originate. Drawing employs non-linear and associative thought processes. And sometimes, when I’m stuck with something, I just start doodling out the issues.

This blog is like a diary, a daily account of one random thought per day for a whole year. For me it reinforced many of the principles behind what creativity is all about. I also believe that it laid a foundation for my career over the next few years. It was, after all, 2014 and 2015 that laid the groundwork for the large stride I was going to take in my career. Soon after I went from a locally based art director in one office to a global leader interacting with dozens of businesses across the globe.

In 2019 I finally decided to share recordings I’d been doing at home for several years. I did this on Squarespace as opposed to SoundCloud or iTunes for several reasons. Having been a “closet musician” for years I finally gave in to the itch to pull the recordings together into albums. This one in particular was a bunch of holiday songs I’d recorded. It was a lot of fun getting the reactions from friends and family on Christmas Eve after sharing this link with them. Click on this text to listen.