Jeff Easley

Jeff Easley
Jeff Easley at GenCon Indy 2014
Born	1954 (1954) Nicholasville, Kentucky, United States
Nationality	USA
Known for	Fantasy art, Illustration
Spouse(s)	Cynthia

Jeff Easley (born 1954 in Nicholasville, Kentucky) is an oil painter who creates fantasy artwork in the tradition of Frank Frazetta.

Easley was born in Nicholasville, Kentucky in 1954. He spent time drawing as a child, particularly creatures such as ghosts and monsters. "I watched lots of monster movies on the late show, and built every monster model kit I could get my hands on," he said. He attended high school in Nicholasville, and then went to college at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. Easley earned a BFA in painting from the university in 1976. While there, he met and married his wife Cynthia, a fellow art major. Their children include Casey, Christopher, Cara, and Charles.

After Cynthia finished with grad school, the couple moved to Massachusetts with some friends, where Easley began his career as a professional artist. "I did freelance work for Warren Publications, including covers and comic strips for Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella, and for Marvel magazines, including covers for Savage Sword of Conan and Bizarre Adventures. But my real income came from my job at the Okey-Doke Popcorn Company." Easley met fellow Kentucky native and artist Larry Elmore through a mutual friend. "When I heard that Larry was planning to leave Fort Knox to join TSR, I got in touch with him and discovered that there might be other job opportunities there." He applied for a job with TSR, publisher of the popular role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons: "I... started here in March 1982. My first project was to paint gemstones on the spines of the first four Endless Quest books, but it was definitely uphill from there." Easley's first RPG piece for TSR was Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth as an interior artist.