A prolific Brooklyn-based 'guy-on-the-street' artist, who dubs himself Elbow Toe, he does work that ranges from humorous to grotesque to horrific and includes hybrid figures, graffiti and body parts. His mediums include charcoal drawings, wood cut and stencil prints on kraft paper, calligraphy on paper and oil bar paintings on door panels. His workspace has a 14 foot ceiling and a lot of skylighting, and is part of the loft home he shares in Brooklyn with his wife. Creating artwork that sells began for him around 2004.

"He was featured prominently at "Wooster on Spring", a show Roberta Smith of the New York Times listed as one of her top 10 exhibitions of 2006. Since that exhibition ELBOW-TOE has become represented by galleries in London, New York, Denver and Los Angeles. Last year he was the featured artist in the project room at Leonard Street Gallery in London, and this year he is featured in the show Poets of the Paste this June at AdHoc Gallery in Brooklyn, and is creating an installation/show with Armsrock at Thinksapce gallery in LA in December." (beacom.com)

Elbow Toe makes a living as a computer programmer, but for his artwork took his name, Elbow Toe, as a reaction to seeing the work of Neck Face, a graffiti California artist, born 1984, who is "known for his frightening drawing style." (Wikipedia) Elbow Toe said to himself: "So if there was a Neck Face, I'd be Elbow Toe. I'd mix some other body parts together. . . .it's kind of fun, but it's so stupid." (gammablog)

However, trained in illustration and commercial art, he has a serious love and respect of drawing and said: "The beauty of line just blows me away." (gammablog). He has been drawing from childhood, including with his grandfather whose profession was making coin dies and his father, a professional football player, who did a lot of drawing in his spare time.

Artists inspiring to him are William De Kooning, Chaim Soutine, Lucien Freud, Frank Auerbach and Francis Bacon. G.B. achieves distortions with his figures and portraits by photographing his models from a variety of images that he can then manipulate

Source:
http://wrybread.com/gammablog/featured/elbow-toe-interview.html
http://www.electricwindowsbeacon.com/elbowtoe_bio.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neckface