Gene Mater is a California-born French-American artist, who spent six years of his youth living and traveling in Europe. His earliest artistic influences were the museums and architecture of southern Germany.

Gene opened his first art studio in 1971. His career has covered a range of activities in the commercial and fine arts fields. He was a political cartoonist for nine years, has illustrated more than a dozen books, and has drawn for numerous national magazines. He worked for several years as a commercial illustrator, when his clients included numerous colleges, banks and regionally and nationally prominent businesses.

Since the early 1990s he has focused attention on watercolor painting. He is influenced by the works of the Norwich School of English watercolorists that flourished in the early 1800s.

Gene was drawn to caricaturing in the 1970s, first as a political cartoonist, subsequently as an artist/entertainer.

He applies his experience, sensitivity and intensity to all his endeavors, whether entertaining an appreciative audience of corporate VIPs in a lounge on the QE2, or creating a sensitively rendered watercolor of a favorite view in Europe or Pennsylvania.