For about 10 years, I was a landscape painter in galleries. When we moved to North Carolina, I talked with my wife about how I loved landscapes but couldn’t figure out how to get into the local gallery scene. She said…. “No… you don’t love landscapes. You LIKE them. You LOVE monsters. After two or three paintings were done for a gallery, you would do a fun painting (monster) for yourself. That’s what you should be doing.” So, I stopped doing the traditional work and started creating my fantasy paintings.

The ShadowMyths idea came from trying to write a book but not knowing what it was about. As an artist, I loved writing the meanings of my paintings, but that wasn't enough.

I realized that, if I laid out my paintings in random order, a story appeared. They were the same as Story Prompts that you learned in your creative writing classes. After I wrote my first book, I realized that everybody else had the same problem. So, I created the ShadowMyths decks.

Over time, gamers were using the decks in their role-playing games to come up with new campaigns or stories. I also found out that people were using them as Oracle cards. Most surprisingly, therapists used them as talking points with patients. My favorite part is that people can use the cards to help others.

About The Gallery of Nightmares

On the gallery's first floor, paintings hang in different wings. When you stand in front of a painting, you'll hear its uplifting message and how to think about the world when dark times have gotten you down.  I'm the artist and the author of the uplifting messages. In reality, they are me. They are the issues that I think about and, in reality, since I'm an optimistic person, they are also the ways that I resolve those issues.

I don't recommend going up to the second floor. On that floor is a very dark and special room called the Shadow Nook. Death lives here, and you will live the psychological nightmares of the inhabitants of the world known as Caelith. In that room, there is a simple little red bench and, on the wall in front of you, are three framed paintings. These paintings are where the clean horror stories come from.