Dean Styers was born in Philadelphia where he spent his youth "wandering around in a daze." From an early age he was drawn to art and music - and it was all downhill from there.

After completing his primary education, he moved to Boston, where he attended The School of The Museum of Fine Arts. After the art school shenanigans he set out to do his art. During this time he executed murals, designed posters & record cover art for bands of varying noteworthiness.

Dean's work uses images of people or objects without clear context to elicit familiar emotions (a pretty girl, a well-dressed man, a child, an astronaut, flowers) but undermines the emotions that attend these icons with text. While the subject is often attractive and comforting – eliciting feelings of nostalgia and innocence – the sentiment that overlays the image is typically bitter, or melancholic, or cynical, or bleak. This juxtaposition often creates a unique conflict for the viewer.

Dean's clean, precise style often misleads some to think the pieces are silk screens, which they are not; they are created with brushed acrylic paint on canvas. Early in his career Dean used bright neon colors combined with text to create an enticing candy-wrapper effect that did bode well with the pseudo-50's and 60's aesthetic that he employed. In recent years he's abandoned that technique and moved to a grey, monochromatic palette that is more akin to faded photographs from the past. In this way his newer work more clearly accentuates the notions of memory and regret: memory of things lost, memory of missed opportunities & memory of things never had.

Dean's paintings have appeared in numerous galleries & museums (The Santa Monica Museum of Art, The Zimmer Museum, The Tucson Museum Of Art, etc.) sharing wall space with dozens of prominent artists, including Marc Ryden, Raymond Pettibon, Diane Arbus, Ed Ruscha, Gary Baseman, Robert Rauschenberg, Ralph Steadman and Andy Warhol.

If you care about such things, he is in the collection of Steven Soderbergh, Brad Pitt, Gary Calamar, Lisa Kudrow, George Clooney, Harry Shearer & The Cartoon Network. He was also commissioned to execute 24 paintings for Los Angeles entertainment agency CAA (Creative Arts Agency).

Currently Dean lives & works in Los Angeles. He still has a great love for music and co-runs a vinyl only record label. When he's not painting, Dean enjoys collecting other people's art, going to demolition derbies and "watching scratchy black-and-white movies."