Leonard Filgate

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.

I am a self-taught artist. Growing up in San Francisco, I took advantage of going to the city's great museums, which were all free back then and within bicycling distance from my home. I can truly say that the great masters helped develop my skills.

I have sold thousands of prints and hundreds of the originals I created to collectors around the world and nearly half a million RIP SQUEAK® Brand books. At one time, I was represented by over fifty art galleries across the US and Canada. My work has been included in the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance exhibition on children's books promoting tolerance and was included in a group show at the Fresno Art Museum in Fresno, California. In 2003, I was the featured illustrator for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. I had a major solo exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, Delaware in 2005/2006.