JOHN SHERFFIUS writes: I've loved art ever since I won a first-grade drawing contest for my crayon portrait of a Thanksgiving turkey. At UCLA I picked up the copy of the school newspaper, the Daily Bruin, and spotted a political cartoon on the editorial page. I knew that was what I wanted to do. I drew cartoons for the Daily Bruin until graduating with a B.A. in psychology in 1984. After freelancing cartoons and op-ed illustrations I landed a job as a graphic artist and cartoonist at the Orange Coast Daily Pilot in 1990. In 1992, I joined the Ventura County Star in Southern California. I was hired as a graphic artist but managed, over the years, to carve out time from that job for editorial cartoons. By 1995, I was producing six cartoons a week. Four weeks after our daughter was born, in 1998, my wife and I moved to Missouri so I could take a job as editorial cartoonist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I produced six cartoons a week for the Post-Dispatch, tackling local, national and global issues and drawing much reader response - both glowing and growling. In 2002, I won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award for my cartoons. In 2004, I was honored with the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. I resigned from the Post-Dispatch in mid-December, 2003. It was a tough decision to make, because the editors had a different vision of the role of an editorial cartoonist than I did, and I felt my work was no longer a good fit for the paper. I love this profession with a passion, however, and have been able to continue producing cartoons several times a week for my former paper, the Ventura County Star, as well as for a handful of other newspapers and web sites, including the Kansas City Star, the Illinois Times, the San Jose Mercury News and American Prospect. My work is available at www.sherffiustoons.com.
2004 John Sherffius
John Sherffius / www.sherffiustoons.com