Eddie Thornton is the typical American artist-as-outsider, ranging from Truman Capote to Norman Mailer, who sees what insiders don’t.  Born half white, half African America on Chicago’s Southside, his father murdered when Eddie was only three years old and replaced by an abusive drug addicted con-man step-father who today would be labeled a sociopath. Through beatings he tried to turn Eddie into the animal he himself was. His lessons to Eddie - steal, cheat and hate.

Living in neighborhoods where violence was the only means of communication, a communication echoed in his home and one that he carried with him to school Eddie was forced, as he says in his story “Jumped!” to survive “through creativity and independence.”  And that, he notes, “makes it so hard to fit in with the rest of the world.”

However, a moment of clarity happened when he looked in the mirror one day and saw his step-father, Thornton got it: The anger, the hate and the street was going to take him to his grave.  He became serious about his education and embraced the help and caring of others - he went on to earn first an associate degree in fine arts along with an associate degree in illustration and a BA with a focus on Computer Graphics at the American Academy of Art. Another moment of clarity came during a writing course taught by Dr. Immaculate Kizza at the University of Tennessee, “Tell your story, your journey, your struggle” she said. The result is “Stolen” containing over a hundred personal stories recounting Thornton’s adaptation to his neighborhood and family clash of rage, sadism and glimmers of affection.
 
Eddie still fights against all those negative teachings but has learned how to become a man, not just a broken animal. He has fought his childhood, embraced the few morsels of good and has discovered what he is truly made of. He is truly unique.
 
Thornton works as a graphic designer in L.A., is an actor and lives in domestic tranquility with his wife Jan and their two dogs Sammie and Chance.