"Pirate Tales" Painting

I was born and raised in San Francisco and started my career as a fine artist, selling mainly maritime art on the streets of San Francisco in the 1970s. I eventually landed in some San Francisco and Monterey galleries. During the1970s and into the 1990s I also worked on set designs for videos, props for Hollywood, and commissioned artwork and murals. In the late 1990s, I moved my family to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, so I could be closer to my main gallery located there. Eventually, my own RIP SQUEAK® gallery was opened with partners in Carmel. It, along with numerous other galleries under the RIP SQUEAKk® name throughout California and Hawaii, closed with the economic downturn in 2010. I am still a children's book illustrator and fine artist and have continued to create art for RIP SQUEAK® books and other titles. My most successful work to date has been based on the character RIP SQUEAK® consisting of both books and art, which I created and developed with my wife, author Susan Yost-Filgate.