Artist-designer Chriss Pagani is an award-winning painter, documentary photographer and graphic designer. Beginning as a hobby painter many years ago, the artist also created editorial cartoons for west coast newspapers, plus graphic designs for many commercial and personal  web sites. A few years ago, Pagani paintings started winning awards in various fine art competitions, too. Some cartoons won awards, too. Today there are over 5,000 Pagani original works of art in private and corporate fine art collections all over the world. Corporate collections include Ernst & Young, and Mt Gay distilleries.

     The artist was born in Portland, Oregon and grew up in difficult times, in a family that often found itself homeless. Those were tough days!  At that time, the young artist developed an interest in street art including graffiti. The artist's family was homeless in many many west coast towns and there is a family joke about being from Bel Air .... living in an old Chevrolet Bel Air, that is.

     Raised mostly in Tillamook county after the homeless days had passed, the artist traveled from Oregon to Washington to California and back -  worked in many fields including a photographer's assistant. The artist spent much of the 80's and 90's as a cog in the corporate machinery, doing book & magazine layout and design work for a publishing company in the Washington DC area. With outsourcing and cutbacks, however, new directions were required...

    Over time, the artist's work naturally developed in three directions: Pop art cartoon-caricatures, huge freeform abstracts, and fine art landscapes. The latter works began to gain critical notice in 2002. The artist has also worked in a modified, updated abstract expressionist style - some of this work may be seen here. The artist has won numerous awards and prizes in various competitions including many first place and "Best in Class" awards.

    Traveling in a small RV to do paintings and sketches, the Pagani eclectic style of open, free-form abstract impressionism and pop art was dubbed roadside art by one article-writer, and the name has stuck to this very day..

     In more recent times, the artist has branched out into the study of portrait drawing, pop-caricature art and cartoons of people - both famous and not so famous. This is especially challenging since the artist has a mild form of a condition commonly called face blindness, or prosopagnosia. Find out more on the Caricature Toonz page. But what can be more fun/weird/interesting than drawing faces when you don't see them like "normal" people do? The results of this work are pop art/abstract hybrids that are unique and possibly even collectible..

Pop Art Illustration Sample Gallery

Fine Art Samples

  For more fine art, visit the Painter of Oregon gallery. For a blog of people caricatures and cartoons: Funny Face Blog. Cat cartoons and logo designs can be found at the artist's blog, Crazy Cat Face.