Sebastian Kruger was born in Hamlin, Germany in 1963. He studied painting and graphic arts and quickly moved on to make his living as a caricaturist, illustrator, and painter. Sebastian Kruger fanatically buries himself into the lifes work and ephemera of each subject so that he might channel their essence into the heady mixture of wash, pencil and impasto that are his illustrations. He leaves no stone unturned. For an illustration about Steve McQueen, Kruger referred to his own personal McQueen library. I have a DVD collection of almost his whole works - movie books and everything, says Kruger. So I was on the same wavelength with Steve McQueen when I painted him as Carter 'Doc' McCoy in Sam Pekinpahs The Getaway. Kruger takes all of that background information and uses his prodigious imagination to lose himself in the alternative universe of his subject. I feel sometimes like an actor, he says. After a day of work in his studio, his wife Andrea will often ask him, How was your day today? And he will say something like, today I was Jimi Hendrixs shirt. From Bogart to Brando, John Wayne to Jimi Hendrix, Stallone to Schwarzenegger - each Kruger caricature exists on multiple levels; as an illustration, as a visually explosive portrait and as a visual tone poem. This is what makes him more than just a talented caricaturist with great technique - and one of the worlds most sought after illustrators. Kruger has been illustrating professionally for twenty years. He lives and works in a forest near Hanover, Germany, with Andrea, two cats and two Rhodesian Ridgeback dogs. His home is the oldest forest rangers house in Lower Saxony. Its a good quiet place to work and be a strange artist, he chuckles.