Where did you grow up? Rock Hill, South Carolina. I lived there seventeen of my first eighteen years, with one year (third grade) spent in Shanghai, China. What brought you to art? I've been drawing since I was a kid. It's always been fun for me. How often would you say you work in your studio? I probably average five days a week. Right now I'm there every morning and many evenings. I'm teaching in the afternoons. My last studio wasn't air-conditioned and in Tallahassee that's kind of important. So it feels like a luxury to be working there. Do you approach each piece the same way in a systemized manner, or does it vary? Can you tell us about the way you begin working on a single artwork? It varies. Sometimes I just start drawing right on the canvas without any planning or sketches. Other times I doodle and sketch out quick studies for paintings. That helps me get rid of the bad ideas. I'm not always great at visualizing a final product. Sometimes I'll have an idea for a painting and I think I can just dive in on the canvas, and sometimes that works , but often I discover that the concept is flawed. I would have figured that out sooner had I drawn it. What materials and tools do you use most? I use acrylic paint on canvas. Sometimes I work on paper or on blank vinyl toys. I'm fond of Golden acrylic flow release and Liquitex soft body paint. My style depends heavily on the opacity of the paint so I use different brands for different colors. Where do you get your inspiration? Amusement parks, churches, temples, billboards, dollar stores, athletic team mascots, toys, album covers, pop music, fireworks and tv. I like big, flashy, beautiful, and tacky. What are you working on lately? For the past five years I've been doing these animal paintings. Last year I started in with some robots. Now the robots and the animals are sometimes hanging out together in the same paintings. The other shift has been dealing more with light, shadow and three-dimensional space. The work is still made up of flat areas of color, but now they describe forms. Before my animal paintings were totally flat two-dimesional, with no depth, light, or shadow. They were meant to be icons in both a religious and digital sense. Who has visited you in the studio? My studio is located in Railroad Square, a 1940's era industrial park that has gradually been taken over by studios and galleries. Every first friday of the month there's a gallery hop, so hundreds of Tallahasseeans and college students come through. What is the best thing about your particular work space? Being in Railroad Square is nice. I've gotten a lot of exposure from the First Friday hops. My studio is provided as part of my artist residency at 621 Gallery (a not for profit contemporary art space) and free is very nice. Also the aforementioned air-conditioning. What don't you like about your studio (if anything)? I don't have any windows or natural light. What do you do for relaxation or to get artistically stimulated? I find artistic stimulation in a variety of places. I love looking through old record covers, magazines, and books (I found a great manual from the eighties about computer graphics). I've also started watching clips from old saturday morning cartoons. For relaxation I listen to National Public Radio and dream of swimming pools or airplanes (sometimes both). What do you want to know about the next studio artist on SpyMart? What (if anything) do you listen to while you work in your studio? Visit John Lytle Wilson on the web: www.johnwilsonwilson.com.