My childhood occurred during the mid-seventies through the early eighties. One day, my parents brought home a collie that I would name Macintosh. I don’t actually recall giving him the name, but we often called him Mackie for short and he quickly become a treasured part of my life. Although, I was unaware of the profound part his name would play later in my life.

In 1984, my father took me to work with him. He worked as an metallurgist for a steel mill. He realized I had little interest in this field, but he knew I liked computers. In his office were several computers, one being, the original Macintosh by Apple. There, I spent the day exploring this machine, fascinated by the things it could do and games it could play. One program in particular, MacPaint, immediately captured my attention. MacPaint was a program for painting graphics on the computer and once I understood the fundamentals of how it worked, I didn’t want to do anything else.

Since the early nineties, I have made my living in one way or another by working on a Macintosh. Either as, a typesetter, a production artist, or a graphic designer. Eventually, I bought my own Mac and started a design business. My wife, who was then still my girlfriend, actually co-signed for that loan to help me buy my first Macintosh computer.

It is astonishing how my life has changed since my first Mac. Although my business started off as a graphic design biz, it soon morphed into an art business where I have been fortunate to make a living as a digital artist since 2004. It was on that first Macintosh that I painted the first Gekkards, digitally, after years of creating them with color pencils. It was also on that Mac that I built the very first website for the Gekkards and used it to make the very first prints of my art.

I feel blessed, to have a father who sensed my interest might lie elsewhere, to have a wife who believed in me enough to help support me, even though she was a single mom at the time. I am so grateful to have grown up in the age of Apple computers and all the possibilities their technology offers. These things aligned in my life to open extraordinary doors for creativity and success. It has allowed me to do what I love and share my sense of humor with the world.

I followed my heart and intuition as Steve Jobs suggests in his 2005 commencement speech for Stanford graduates. My journey has been exciting, astonishing, heartbreaking and hard, harder than I ever imagined. But, I like to think if Steve ever met the Gekkards, he would feel pride, for trusting my gut, for staying hungry, for staying foolish. He would be even prouder knowing it all began on a Macintosh.

Godspeed Mr. Jobs.