StonerDude Art
It’s this ritual trifecta of cannabis, music, and counter-culture that becomes the muse that guides Michael’s AKA StonerDude’s fun, fantastical b-movie style of cartoonish artwork.
The art of Michael Maysonet, AKA StonerDude, pulls you in like a tractorbeam and keeps you hovering above each piece, mesmerized by the symmetry and line-work, all while giggling at each expression his creations possess, bringing to life a world that is familiar just as much as it is unusual.
Born in the season of Samhain, at the end of the Sixties in the Boroughs of New York City, by the age of three Michael Maysonet had already begun his ritual of wielding the pen, or in the case of these humble beginnings, a crayon...
He would spend hours drawing out his favorite characters from Warner Bros. and Disney, and mimicking styles he picked up from cartoonists Charles Schulz, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and Tex Avery. In the early Seventies Michael’s family moved to Southern California and like most adolescent boys in the Seventies, Michael devoured comic books. Always with a pen or pencil in hand, his skill and creativity would be inspired by his comic book idols, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. In high school art classes Michael began practicing techniques with a variety of mediums from watercolors and acrylics to airbrushing.
When Michael was eight years old he would hang out with a group of friends who shared his love for rock and roll and they would lip sync songs by the band KISS. Here Michael would find a new creative outlet, his second passion- music. While his friends played air-guitar to Black Diamond, Michael was banging out air-drums with his mom’s wooden spoons from the kitchen, visualizing each beat of the drum and crash of the cymbals in the song. Like drawing, music would become a major part of Michael’s life.
Coming up in an age with artists like Robert Crumb, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, and Frank Frazetta, creating their own unique style of cartoons and fantasy art only encouraged Michael to continue practicing his own art form. At the age of fourteen Michael entered his drawing talents in an “Anti-Drug Poster Contest” and his colorful Just Say No poster won. With his bounty in hand, Michael bought his first, cheap, drum kit. Much like drawing, once Michael started playing the drums he never stopped. As a young adult he lived in Oakland, California, playing with bands all over the Bay Area and throughout the West. At the same time Michael was drawing concert posters and fliers as well as designing t-shirts for bands he was in and knew. Michael has played, performed, toured, and recorded with dozens of accomplished musicians and now, living in Las Vegas, Nevada, Michael beats the skins and crushes the high hat with his band BONG and fills in with bands whenever an accomplished drummer is needed.
Little did the fourteen year old Michael, who won the anti-drug poster contest know that the adult Michael would develop another love in his life- a love for the cannabis flower. Here is where the alter-ego StonerDude arrives on the scene, the animated live-action character who has become its own personality out in the world.
It’s this ritual trifecta of cannabis, music, and counter-culture that becomes the muse that guides Michael’s AKA StonerDude’s fun, fantastical b-movie style of cartoonish artwork.
