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About The Artist
When he was thirteen, a cow stepped on his foot, breaking it in several places, and it was during his convalescence that he decided it would be better to pursue a career as a rock star and/or an artist. Which worked out about as well as the cowboy deal. He attended Virginia Commonwealth University, and got a degree in Painting and Printmaking, where his professors showed him slides of good art, told a lot of big stories, and encouraged a great deal of drinking, and Wes took copious mental notes, which he has never forgotten. In the subsequent years, Freed married and divorced a few times, while playing with bands such as Mudd Helmut, Dirtball, and The Shiners, and drawing the Willard's Garage comic for various local alternative newspapers. He now resides just outside of Richmond, VA with his current wife, Jyl, in a home aptly described as a cross between The Addams' Family house and The Beverly Hillbillies' house (before they struck oil). They share their home with two big black mutts, an ersatz cat, (a/k/a "The Little Yelly Dog") a fearless and enterprising colony of mice, and the occasional orphaned possum. The Freeds extend their eternal Love and Gratitude to The Drive By Truckers. Just because they're so goddam cool. 
http://bikenutz.com/shoptruck/dashjob/ A page about a man, his dashboard and a journey.
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Wes Freed grew up on a cattle farm in the Shenandoah Valley, an area that has inspired most of his landscapes, and many of the characters who appear in his paintings and comics, as well as Willard's Garage itself. There aren't actually a whole bunch of skeleton looking folks in that area, but when Wes was young, he ran across a DuPont safety magazine that featured a drawing of a bottle-wielding, bowler-wearing skeleton driving a roadster, and that obviously made a big impression on him, since he's been painting variations on that theme since he was about seven years old.
