Danny Stephens

I was raised in the greater Memphis, Tennessee area, spending most of my formative years in Mississippi. Although I was studying art, my focus was on playing football. I left Mississippi State in 2009, leaving my football days behind me to go out on a soul guided quest for who I was outside of the southern bred expectations of sports and other family pressures.

I found myself in Utah working seasonal jobs in the ski industry, and it's there that I felt the urge to finish my art teaching degree, this time with a burning passion and curiosity to take it more seriously. Art has been a part of my life as long as I can remember, but I didn't consider a life of being a full-time artist until my senior year of getting my degree to teach. Even then, my plan was to move to Portland, Oregon to get some experience in community art education and then get my masters degree. But in Portland I was introduced to visionary art, live painting, and the music festival art world. It's there where I learned that the preconceived idea about the lonely starving artist was flawed. I found an army of world changing visionaries co-creating in extremely fun environments while selling art. I was hooked.