Ryan is an enrolled member of the Colorado River Indian Tribes of Parker, Arizona.   He was born in Parker in 1967 and was raised in the small town of Needles, California.
      He attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he received a certification in Two Dimensional Art in 1987.   He transferred to the University of Arizona in Tucson where he earned a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts with an emphasis on illustration in 1994.
      Ryan currently resides in Tucson with his wife and two daughters.   He works with the Upward Bound Program at Pima Community College East Campus and is a member of their Adjunct Art Faculty.

      "I enjoy working with figures as my vehicle for expression and incorporating Native American subject matter.   I feel that I have been given the ability to create so I can explore my culture and enable others to learn and enjoy what I have created.   My work is influence by interest in the art of popular culture, specifically comic books.   I am also influenced by contemporary artists Paul Pletka, Mike Larson, Lawrence W. Lee, Baje Whitethorne and the late T.C. Cannon.
      I hope to convey in the imagery I create, the diversity of Native American people.   The most distinctive aspect of diversity is found within ceremony.   This area of Native American culture I find to be the most intriguing and the area that fuels the basis of my work."