About
Pete Sprankle was born in a small town in New Jersey in 1972 and spent most of his childhood drawing. Even when everyone else stopped because it wasn’t cool or hip, he found it was his best escape into a different world. After high school and taking weekend classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology, he attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City, but was easily distracted by the New York nightlife. After becoming a fixture in the New York club scene, he spent the following year trying to succeed as a fine artist. Despite displaying his work at numerous shows and events throughout the city, he grew frustrated with people saying he wouldn’t be famous until he was dead and moved home to search for a different path.
He spent the next seven years working odd jobs while he traveled and developed numerous projects. After writing a 238-page science fiction novel, several screenplays and a series of children’s books, but never being able to get his work published, he decided to take a more serious look at becoming a filmmaker, and attended the New York Film Academy in October of 1994. From what he learned there, he decided to buy his own film equipment, and soon wrote, produced, directed, and starred in a 73-minute feature film called LEON TWELVE; a strange comedy inspired by the work Monty Python, Woody Allen, Jim Jarmusch, and Hal Hartly, and based on his theory that God didn’t create the Earth, he just owns the licensing rights. Three years and $17,000 later he was finished and began trying to sell the film, but once again grew exhausted from the constant rejection and decided he needed to do something very different with his life.
In September in 1999 he drove across country to start over in LA, and see if he could sell his movie in the belly of the beast. It didn’t take long to figure out that it was not going to be as easy as he had planned. The next year and a half was spent trying to start a “normal” life, and doing his best to leave his dreams of fame and fortune behind. He did a few paintings, and eventually wrote several more screenplays, but has been unable to get agents and producers to even read them. While working in retail to make ends meet, he forced himself to go back to school to study 2D and 3D animation, story boarding, digital editing, as well as other computer art programs which he had been reluctant to learn for many years.
At the dawn of 2004, after doing a painting for a friend’s Christmas present, he decided it was time to go back to follow his true passion in fine art. Starting the year off with completing 16 new paintings in less than two months, and now an on-line Gallery of his best work for the whole world to have access to, Pete Sprankle is determined to be the first major influence in art for the Twenty-first Century. Whether this is an arrogant or overly ambitious goal, he believes “those who think unrealistically are the ones who change reality.”
