Born Idahoan in the 80’s and seasoned with regular travel it’s safe to say I have been a creator and builder since a very young age. I began showing formally in the Pacific Northwest in 2007. Colorful murals and narrative oil paintings span the majority of my work now, despite a few boughts of jewelry and metal working.

I have been accused of being “too colorful” and “too independent” yet I paint on, because I think the time has passed for old cranky men to rule the art world. Much like the time has passed for mermaids to entertain lonely sailors. Now I hope we enter a time where lady captains proudly enjoy mermen if they want to in the same ways. Mermaids have saturated the collective consciousness, but where do they all come from?

Stories often tell of male sirens as being hideous, ugly creatures. I find there’s a lot of stigma in todays world around male beauty in a number aspects. Let’s fight the patriarchy by encouraging some body positivity and gender diversity in mer-community’s, and all communities of today.

Oil paintings available for purchase, individual prints available at HappDayPainter.Redbubble.com or preorder your 2024 pin-up merdude calendar
today online at HappDayPaintings.com.

I celebrated 1,000 days of painting consecutively by painting the Pacific Ocean plein air. One thing I noticed in my time there, while there was quite a bit of mermaid themed merchandise, there was very little merMan themed merchandise available.

The time for lady captains is here, as is the need for Merdudes; to do my part in fighting the patriarchy I left my visit to the ocean and brought to fruition a pin-up merdude calendar for 2023. 2024 preorders available now at HappyDayPaintings.com.