The majority of his art education came from life experiences, his own studies of the great masters, and his unwavering determination and diligence to learn and succeed.

Leonard Filgate grew up near the ocean in San Francisco, California. He spent many childhood hours roaming the beaches and parks with his friends, playing a variety of sports, and drawing and painting alone in his room.

After high school, Leonard joined the United States Merchant Marine and continued his art studies through observation while traveling throughout Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, and the Mediterranean. Shoreside, he lived in both San Francisco and New York City. After five years at sea, he left the Merchant Service and dedicated all his energies to his own personal study of art.

In 1977, Leonard met Susan Yost. Two years later, she became his wife and collaborator on many artistic endeavors, which eventually led to the creation of Rip Squeak & Friends.

Before starting on the Rip Squeak project in 1997, Leonard had sold numerous paintings to individuals, including commissioned work. He exhibited in many galleries and in shows throughout the United States and occasionally taught art privately and in schools. He completed several commissioned paintings for the United States Navy, one of which became a limited edition print. He worked on props for a Warner Bros. Television pilot and created storyboards and backdrops for commercial video and television studios. After the birth of his daughter in 1984, he developed an interest in children's book illustrations and created imagery for his wife's stories.

The subjects of Leonard's paintings have included marine art, fantasy art, landscapes, and cityscapes, toy still-life paintings, theatrical backdrops, and reproductions of traditional Japanese screens.

Prints and originals of Leonard's Rip Squeak & Friends illustrations have been sold worldwide through over fifty galleries which have carried his work. He was the featured illustrator at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in 2003, has had work in a traveling exhibition of children's book illustrators who's books promotes tolerance (organized by the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance and Every Picture Tells a Story in Los Angeles), and in 2005, was honored with a one-man show at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, Delaware.

Creating art with a childhood theme and whimsy has brought Leonard great pleasure. He and his wife, Susan, developed Rip Squeak & Friends out of a need to create characters that would express Leonard's philosophy that art should imitate the best life has to offer, whether it be real or from somewhere deep within the imagination. His desire and intentions are simple: that his art makes the viewer smile and feel good.

READ ABOUT SUSAN YOST