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Dan Nelson failed the very first assignment of his academic career. On DAY ONE of kindergarten he colored the balloons instead of counting them. The artistic itch was already that strong. Undaunted by such inauspicious beginnings, he went on to win a string of prestigous awards:

• 2nd Place, National Safety Poster Contest
• 3rd Place, Local Pumpkin Carving Contest!
• 1st Place, Small Town Window Painting Competition (against a bunch of kids roughly half his age, as it turned out)

Naturally, such accolades kept the itch going, so he went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from a small college in the Midwest. His real education, however, took place during the 15 or 20 years when he sat at his desk 50 or 60 hours a week drawing whatever the telephone told him to draw. Most Americans would have stumbled upon Dan's work at sometime during the 80's -- in restaurants and sproting good stores, at summer camps, from IBM to hospitals and book covers to billboards. "I'm really famous," he used to tell his kids, "just nobody knows it".

Dan now divides his time between illustration and fine art, still doing a wide variety of work--airbrush realism, cute (or funny) cartoons, architectural renderings, street paintings, portrait and landscapes in oil. He loves painting large and he loves an audience, so doing 8 x 10 foot murals in public is one of his favorite activities.