Hey, my name is Mitch Sander. I was born and raised in Bismarck, North Dakota and graduated from Century High School in 2009. I moved to Bozeman, Montana in 2010. In 2012, I started to paint some of my first works. I hung them in coffee shops and have basically been painting ever since.

I have quite a few styles of work. This particular piece was made from a series of local wildlife. I did them for installing canvas, but submitted one of them for this because it’s a local bird to the area. I like creating in this style mostly because I’m able to change up the patterns which kind of make up the animal, and I can take it wherever and make them all look different.

I take inspiration for my art from quite a few things. Mostly just thinking when I’m out walking or sitting and sketching or just simply watching videos on YouTube that are art based. I usually sketch quite a few versions for my works, and once I land on the style for a particular thing, I go and just make a big series of that to try to get all my thoughts about it out there.

I really think public art has a great impact on a city. It’s always been super interesting to me and it allows for a huge canvas and an awesome reach to the public. Some advice I have for young, creative people is to just simply always create. I never took my work too seriously because I was always told that creating art isn’t a real job. That I really couldn’t get into that or that I had to find a real job. But art is a real job and the earlier you start, the better.