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i was born in St. Andrew, Jamaica, West Indies in 1971. After passing through the educational system (Holy Rosary Preparatory School, Vaz Preparatory School, St. George’s College High School for Boys, Excelsior Community College) all i had to show for my time were 1) a High School Certificate 2) passes in Art and Physics (GCE o’level B & C respectively) & English Language and English Literature (CXC General Level 2 each - where 1 is the highest score allowed) 3) a Certificate in Computers and Electronics, 4) a load of mostly unfinished drawings and paintings, and 5) a reputation as a half-decent artist who was pretty good at electronics, photography, and sarcasm. Hooray for me! What was i to do? From my perspective, there were no real opportunities for someone with my “credentials”. The electronics/ computer industry wasn’t as ‘open’ as it is today, and Art was not seen as ‘real’ work. Even today, artists are not as respected in Jamaica as in other countries - especially with the advent of computer-aided graphics. So then! 1990. Off to Florida for me, to get a BSc degree in Aviation Maintenance. Unfortunately, i didn’t finish the course due to financial constraints, but i did manage to hold a 3.7 GPA for the 2 years i was at Broward Community College. 1992. Back in the old JA. By this time the Computer industry is taking off like a rocket. i hook up with another returning resident who’s set up a Design/Output house: Computer Presentations. This is my first exposure to decent design software -CorelDRAW! 2.0; Photoshop 2.0; Pagemaker (Aldus, not Adobe). i learn quick. A year later i’m at the Ministry of Education’s Secondary School Textbook Project, laying out, helping to design, and taking photos for High School textbooks. With QuarkXpress, PhotoShop 2.5, and CorelDRAW 3-5, life is good. Illustrator, however, gathers dust on the bookshelf. User-friendly? NOT! i see an advert for Canvas 3.5. Corel, Quark & Photoshop in one? Sounds good to me! 1994-1995. i’m freelancing with Dunlop Corbin Compton, an advertising agency, and RavenWeb Graphics/ Zone Publishing doing adverts, booklayouts, graphics, and my first website. Hey! That HTML stuff isn’t so hard after all! i finally manage to buy a copy of Canvas (version 5.0). Heaven (and home) calleth. Now i can work from home doing business cards, letterheads, posters, an all that good stuff!! 1997. Freelance life ends temporarily as i go to work at Rotoflex Jamaica Ltd., a flexographic printery, designing labels for mostly food and and drink products, and doing CMYK/ Spot Colour output using Illustrator 8.01 and Photoshop 4-5. 2001-2002. Free again, at last! About time, too... Again, i head off to Florida. i spend nine months moving between Florida, Washington D.C., and New York, where i get accepted into The School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Guess what though? The dreaded “Lack of Finaces” creature rears it’s ugly head once more. So it’s home again to try and raise the necessary funds to pay for tuition. i get some freelance work with the Jamaica National Marketing and Creative Unit (HI Stacey!), and at the end of that... 2003. i join up with another Graphic Artist, Patrick Allen, to create Vision Concept Studio where we focus on producing Illustrations, Graphic Designs, Computer Graphics, Fine Art images, Digital Photos, and all that good stuff. It’s slow going, but i’ll get where i’m going to - Preferrably, that will be design university in Japan, but we’ll see how it all works out... 2004. “On my own again...” The start of this new year finds me, for various reasons, trying to do my own thing, from my own (rented) location, under my own tagline- Realis Digitalis. This should be interesting, at the very least...
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