Mark Sunshine, the artist.

Art was the first creative activity I became involved with. I did not have any formal training when I was a child. I became noticed as an artist for the common reason, I was the kid who kept drawing while others stopped. My family lived in Brooklyn. I was born in New York City. I was an adopted child. I have not found my biological connections.

As I grew older I kept drawing, awkwardly, I really didn't know what art was, yet knew that people would pay attention to me for the fact that I drew. I copied a lot of things I liked and even shamelessy passed off some copies as ideas of my own. I hate the fact that I did that. My family, my mother, father, grandparents, none of them were artistic at all. I have thought that art was the primary aspect of expression for me because I could do it quietly and without involvement from my family. In hindsight I wish I was exposed to say, music lessons of some sort, but that did not happen.

When my family moved from Brooklyn to East Windsor, New Jersey I met a person who would inspire me to continue art and become a bit more aware of it. His name is Paul Komoda. He was then and is today a phenomonal talent and a good friend.

Paul was the top dog in the art department as we grew up and the best thing about when we would hang out was -- art or mainly drawing was pure joy -- not the same as it would be for me when I was dealing with non-artists/non-creatives. Our young collaboration purely creativity and fun.

My family moved away from East Windsor as I approached my teens and again art became almost a social survival tool. I again toiled on relatively unimaginative endeavors, well aware of the attention the practice would get me and this only got worse and more shameless as my hormones kicked in. I do not identify with this now, but that is that -- it "was what it was."

I grew to become friendly with other artists in high school, mainly Florian Bachleda, who guided me to the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

The School of Visual Arts blew away the vestiges of the shallow artist I was. I grew and my confidence grew. I began to become the true artist I am today, living my art. I went on to study cartooning with giants such as Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner and Gary Panter. I met great talents such as Chris Capuozzo, Peter Girardi and others. Another person from my high school, Steve McCarron would also head to the School of Visual Arts though we took no classes together.

After exiting college I continued making my own brand of cartoons.  I went on to involve myself with art on the web as well as designing web sites, doing political illustrations and fliers for local New Jersey campaigns, creating graphics for businesses and doing illustration. To this day art dominates my day to day existence, holding equal footing with music.