My name is Tom Riggs and I love art! I am a self-taught freelance artist living in Fort Collins, Colorado. My passion is in watercolor and I particulary enjoy painting on watercolor canvas. The finished product is sprayed with a fixative and UV protector so the paintings can be hung without glass. I love to paint landscapes/cityscapes with lots of light and strong contrasts. I was born in Wyoming and raised in Colorado where we get over 300 days of sunshine a year. Maybe that's why I love the bright, strong contrasts so much.

I believe everyone should do what they love, and I'm lucky enough to be doing just that! I spend part of each day outside, enjoying our great outdoors and getting inspiration and photographs for my next paintings. Whether it's on a run or a bike ride, or somewhere else while out on vacation, I'm constantly engaged in the world around me, taking it all in and absorbing the atmosphere that I hope to portray in my paintings.

I also love cartooning and have my own comic strip, "SureWeird Forest." The three bears in my strip are based on the Teddy Bears my brothers and I played with when we were very young. Well...I guess it's more the NAMES of the bears that I'm using, more than the way we played back then. My bears are fun-loving, clumsy, witty, sarcastic...whatever the situation calls for.

Another joy of mine is wood carving. I don't carve the traditional way. Instead, I use a dremel. I've carved illustrations and phrases onto log bed frames or log furniture, and I've carved designs into the roofs of bird houses.

I try to do a little bit of everything, but I always come back to watercolor. I hope you enjoy my work as much as I do.