About Me

Growing up on a diet of comics & skateboards

Born in 1974 in Heidelberg, Germany, my first love were comics. No wonder, my dad was a sales executive at Carlsen Verlag one of the largest European comic and kids-book publishers. So naturally I grew up on a steady diet of Tim & Struppi, Smurfs, and loads of other comics, mostly by French and Belgian artists.

At the age of 10 or so I got my first skateboard, a tiny fibreglass one, that was soon to be replaced with a large, wooden one with all kinds of weird plastic “guards” attached to it. This one however was soon replaced by a Vision Hippystick and I could declare myself A SKATER!

Skating reading comics and drawing comic characters was about all I did at that time.

PUNK!

One of my skater friends had an older brother. This brother did not have a name, he called himself “24″ and he was a punk, Mohawk and all!! He provided us with mix tapes of old English punkrock, American hardcore and the occasional psychobilly, and guess what: we were now officially skate-punks!

When I was 13 the older brother took us to a Spermbirds show. F##ing Nazi Skinheads were trying to storm the venue, stagediving, pogo and just general chaos. We were at the back of the room probably shitting our pants, but having the time of our lives! I was hooked!

ROCKABILLY PSYCHOSIS

As I mentioned above there was one or two Psychobilly songs on the tapes 24 gave us, and I bought some Cramps records myself by now, thinking that it was Punk anyway. We did not yet know what Rockabilly or Psychobilly was, but this was about to change. We went to see the Pogues at an open air festival. Also on the bill were The Fleshtones (a fact that I could not appreciate then, but do now when I can state that I saw them in the 80s!!) and the Stray Cats. What a show! The Pogues were great, but the Stray Cats blew us away! And all those cool guys with drapes and leopard-skin creepers. And the even cooler guys with huge flat-tops!

Guess what soon enough we had flats ourselves and entered the Psychobilly scene. Unfortunately around that time we quit skating, developed an interest in girls, hung out at the schoolyard in the evenings. I was still drawing, skulls with flats and band logos!! It wasn’t long before we decided to form a band, so I got myself an electric guitar, Tobi got a drum kit and Holger got one of those big stand-up basses. How he managed to trick his parents into that is still beyond me. Neither of us could play, but still we did!

FLYERS, POSTERS AND THE LOVE FOR XEROX MACHINES

This was the staring point of my career as poster artists. Now my drawing-skills could be put to good use at last. We had no gigs, ok, but we had flyers and demo-tape-covers and T-Shirts!! We never played a gig before the other two kicked me out of the band and replaced me with another friend, who could play the guitar properly. Well, I could still draw, so what the hell, no hard feelings!

Over time my taste of music changed a little, back to punk, garage-rock, 60s-trash, surf, hardcore. I founded another band, I’m still with: Achtung Spitfire Schnell Schnell!! We play gigs, we sell our singles. I still draw. We got to know a lot of bands on the road and I draw for them as well. I draw for booking agencies, you get the picture.

SCREENPRINTING EVOLUTION

In my early punk days I once saw Kozik posters at a record shop. Posters that were much too expensive for me back then, but I was hooked on day glow colours and think heavy paper stock ever since, but screenprinting was not happening here. I just could not find a way to do it. Until I stumbled across a program for the local art school were they offered a course in screenpriting in 2007. All those years and here it was right across the street (literally!!) I took the course twice, befriended the Teacher and can now use the workshop from time to time.

Today I still do mainly poster, merchandise and cover artwork for bands and bookers, mainly friends, but also do some other stuff and even a skateboard design last year. I’m always interested in cool project for nice people. I’ve got a normal day job in the IT Industry that pays quite OK but consumes most of my time. I still play in the band. From time to time I DJ at the local pub. I skate again, but only to get from A to B. I collect art-books. And I draw.

I live with my wife, our little baby boy and two cats in Mannheim, Germany.

Feel free to contact me for any illustration and design needs