MEET DAVID MASTERS - THE ARTIST BEHIND SURREAL24SEVEN

I’m David Masters, alias Surreal24seven. Fifty years old, trapped in Guatemala for over a decade. I used to work in my father’s family business until some clowns with bigger mouths than brains staged a violent robbery. Left me stranded in a tiny, windowless room with barely enough WiFi to reach the outside world. That confinement became my insane asylum, where I started building surreal worlds, part therapy, part stubborn act of survival.

Before art swallowed me whole, two other lives shaped the work you see now. At 17, I moved to Los Angeles chasing acting dreams, scoring bit parts in shows like Beverly Hills, 90210, Saved by the Bell: The New Class, and My So-Called Life. Mostly, though, it was endless auditions, brutal rejections, and learning to smile through the sting. The same grit that kept me showing up in casting rooms now carries me through bear markets, zero-engagement slumps, and long dry spells in the NFT space. Same casting couch energy, different fight.

Later, I ran a web design business serving startups and names like Ralph Lauren, Pamela Anderson, and the Miss America Organization. One client meeting brutally exposed my technical gaps, so I enrolled in a four-year UCLA Extension certificate program to master design, HTML, and Photoshop. Those years of composites, layouts, and relentless experimentation seeped into my blood - they're the invisible foundation beneath every layered, story-rich piece I create today.

Every picture starts with a story I can’t tell straight. I wrestle with ideas until they land somewhere between raw memory and wishful dream, always pushing for something original and emotionally piercing. The images are born from feelings I can’t say with words, vulnerable, awkward, sometimes embarrassing, often childlike. Art takes what language fumbles. Channeling those emotions into surreal scenes gives them shape without apology. When someone feels something, I’ve succeeded. If it leaves them cold, the piece has failed.

My work has landed on SuperRare, in galleries, juried contests, and on global billboards. Through 1/1 NFTs, commissions, and prints, each carries a shard of my ongoing story. Right now, I’m grinding toward escape, moving back to America with Chicago in my sights. More shows, new commissions, entirely fresh bodies of work. That’s the horizon I’m fighting for.