Lowbrow art, skateboarding, motorcycles, hot rods, sports cars, all types of music—these are some of the influences that have shaped and molded Bryan’s life and art, and it’s not passive. Bryan has been involved in all of these areas for his whole life.

Bryan got his first skateboard at around 10 years old, his first motorcycle at 13, his first electric guitar at 15, and his first sports car at 17. Before all of that he was customizing his bicycles, complete with banana seats, sissy bars, rattle-can paint jobs, and playing-cards snapping at the spokes. Don’t think any of this means that Bryan grew up wealthy. Quite the opposite is true. That first skateboard was generic. The motorcycle was used, needed work, and his father got it on a trade bargain. The guitar was a Sear’s special, and that first sports car? It was a 1980 Mustang Fastback that Bryan paid $300 for from a family friend, and it also needed work, but that work and passion for customizing furthered Bryan’s interest in art.

Skateboard magazines and Bones Brigade videos pushed Bryan to eventually get sponsored by 777 Skateboards. He built numerous half-pipes, quarter pipes, launch ramps, fun boxes, rail slides and so on, and took more falls than he cares to remember, but the life was good. The ramps were built with salvaged wood and broken PVC pipes, assembled in the heat and humidity of Florida. Through it all, skateboarding developed the friendships and experiences that would propel Bryan’s world in amazing directions.

After playing in punk and metal bands through high school, Bryan joined the Air Force and was stationed in Alaska, where he became a tattoo apprentice on the side. The long, dark, winter days left Bryan struggling for something to do, so he also started a grassroots magazine called the Magpie. The ‘zine was black and white, photocopied, hand-stapled, and featured art, short stories, photography, and poems that were sent to the magazine via snail mail. This was, after all, the mid 1990s.

Shortly after leaving Alaska and returning to Florida, Bryan joined an emo-alternative band called Jeremiah’s Grotto as their bassist. They recorded the album Exemplar, and were signed soon thereafter to Screaming GIANT Records, allowing Bryan and the band to do four national tours and play with great bands such as P.O.D., Switchfoot, Living Sacrifice, MXPX, and many others.

The band went through many member changes in a short period, and Bryan didn’t feel he and his bandmates shared the same vision, so he stepped out of Jeremiah’s Grotto and struggled for awhile to find his next path in life.

He sold sunglasses in a mall for a while, was promoted to manager, then heard that the store was closing. Bryan asked the owner if he could buy the inventory and keep the store open himself, and over the next couple of years, became quite successful in retail. However, retail was never Bryan’s dream. He met a young woman named Rachel, married her, closed his retail stores, and moved to Colorado where he and Rachel opened Covenant Tattoo in Fort Collins. A couple of years later, his drawings and paintings began selling at a pace which allowed him to sell the tattoo shop and begin making art full-time.

Since 2008, Bryan has been a major contributor to the custom art-toy scene. He went by Color Chemist in those early years, and produced a series of hand painted Dunny figurines called Beast Buddies. Over the course of a decade, Bryan produced hundreds of custom, one-of-a-kind 3D art toys on a variety of platforms, getting him featured by Kidrobot and Urban Outfitters. Although Bryan hasn’t created many custom figures recently, there are a lot of blanks at rest in his studio, waiting to be awakened again when the time comes.

Currently Bryan’s live music interests are on hold, as his art, novels, Taekwondo, and family consume 100% of his time. He shows art at events nearly every weekend in Jacksonville and around the southeastern USA. He’s still tuning and customizing cars, 4x4s, and motorcycles, goes hiking with his family whenever possible, and contributes daily to the preservation and growth of traditional art.