The History of Rip Squeak

At CollectorsLine, we carry only the finest collectibles and figurines.  We are delighted to present the enchanting and whimsical collection of Rip Squeak, Inc.

Creator - Leonard Filgate - Artist and Illustrator

For nearly 40 years, Leonard Filgate has worked as a professional artist.  His career began, when at the age of 16, he sold his first painting.  He is self-taught, with no formal art training.  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.

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 Nave, 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 studies.  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, (Susan Yost-Filgate, Author).

Prints and originals of Leonard's Rip Squeak 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 and 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.