About Hotrod Riley

My life as an artist started around ten years old, in the back of a classroom where I was supposed to be learning history and geography.

While the other kids took notes, I drew caricatures of the teachers—bigger noses, wilder hair and oversized cartoon ears. It made class move faster, kept me entertained and, fortunately, never got me caught. I earned a respectable collection of solid C’s, so I considered the system a success.

Years later, I made the practical decision to study business. In my generation, announcing that you wanted to become an artist was a reliable way to make sure your parents did not pay for college. Business seemed safer.

So I built a career, helped build an organization and continued drawing in the backs of conference rooms instead.

My wife and I have now spent more than thirty years building a Texas nonprofit that helps provide meals for children in underserved communities. Together, we raised two incredible children, and our family has had the privilege of watching that mission grow far beyond what we could have imagined.

Art was woven through all of it.

Over the years, I painted motorcycles, mini-choppers, signs, helmets, bowling pins, guitars, shoes and just about anything with enough open space to hold a design. I studied airbrushing, flames, lettering and traditional hand-painted pinstriping. Much of that work was donated to charity auctions, created as gifts or sold at prices that made my heart happy and my accounting degree nervous.

But those years mattered.

Creating for causes, families and people I cared about strengthened me as an artist. It taught me that art can do more than decorate a wall or machine. It can carry a story, create a connection and help something worthwhile move forward.

My own story also includes a darker road.

Alcohol once had a hold on my life that I could not break on my own. Jesus Christ met me there, rescued me and gave me a new life in sobriety. In the years since, I have had the privilege of walking alongside hundreds of men in recovery and sharing my story in treatment facilities, halfway houses and churches both large and small.

I do not tell that story because I have everything figured out. I tell it because restoration is real.

That may be part of why I have always been drawn to old hot rods, weathered metal and especially rat rods. There is something beautiful about a machine that has been beaten up, rebuilt, improved and then allowed to keep its scars. The wear is not hidden. It becomes part of the design.

I understand that.

The name Hotrod Riley grew naturally out of my love for those cars and the hand-painted culture surrounding them. Friends from motorcycle and car shows began using the nickname, and in 2012 I gave it to the studio. During the week I went to work as regular Riley. In the evenings and on weekends, Hotrod Riley kept painting.

Today, my work blends traditional pinstriping, hot-rod culture, distressed surfaces, bold color and original design. I still believe in artwork made by hand—lines with slight imperfections, brushstrokes with personality and pieces that feel like someone actually lived behind them.

Every piece carries something from the road that brought me here: humor, recovery, gratitude, craftsmanship, service and the belief that old things—and people—can be restored without losing the marks that made their story worth telling.

I am deeply thankful to my wife, my family, the people who have supported this work and, above all, to Jesus Christ, who saved my life and gave me the opportunity to keep creating.

Hotrod Riley is not just a name on the art.

It is the story behind it.