Venice Gas House Collage

Launching BrekanArts.com in1998, Brekan was one of the first fine artists to present images of original artwork on the internet. Following that progress, Brekan unleashed one of the earliest internet meme sensations the 2001 series "My Love Affair with Barbie," a digital photomontage series created from video stills with video compositing. Ralph Michael Brekan started oil painting at age 12 (1986). He attended McClintock High School in Tempe, Arizona where he excelled in theater and fine arts. His high school studio portfolio earned him acceptance at several prestigious art schools, including Parsons, Columbia College, and NYU Tisch School of the Arts (1992). Deterred by cost, Brekan accepted a scholarship to Scottsdale Community College (1993-1994) where he began shooting experimental art films and contributing visual art and multimedia to art parties, concerts, and raves. In 1995, Brekan briefly retreated to the Czech Republic with his soon-to-be wife, Theresa Brekan (nee Sauer). Returning to Phoenix in the Spring of 1996, Brekan unveiled a series of works based on his photographs of Prague at the iconic Alwun House in downtown Phoenix. It was in these years Brekan worked as an assistant to director and production designer, Catherine Hardwicke on "Three Kings," starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg. The success of Brekan's annual Swirling Daze Multimedia Arts Extravaganza at the Alwun House presented Brekan mainstream gallery exhibitions for Brekan's work in Phoenix, and beyond. In 1999, Brekan's artwork unveiled for the first time in the United Kingdom, exhibiting in the Millennium Art Exhibition in Great Wryly. which included fellow celebrity artists such as Ewen McGregor and Emma Thompson. In the Spring of 2001, Brekan unveiled his first digital photomontage series, My Love Affair with Barbie at Agora Gallery in New York City. In 2003, Brekan's portrait of Andy Warhol (c. 1997) was acquired by Musee Artcolle, the international center for the documentation of the art of collage and assemblage, in Plemet, France. Brekan's further explored digital photomontage with the witty Patriot Action Figures (c.2003) digital collage unveiled at Aldo Castillo Gallery in Chicago (Apr. 2004). In October of 2004, Brekan returned to Los Angeles exhibiting My Love Affair with Barbie at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art.