Curtis has had a very diverse range of experiences that have influenced his creativity including time with the carnival and years as a bartender in the French Quarter. He started his creative career more than twenty-five years ago as a visual artist. His first collaboration was with writer, musician, choreographer, and activist Steve Wright. Curtis did the set design on the modern dance piece Pikadon, set in post-atomic bomb Hiroshima.
In 1989, Curtis also organized a guerrilla art piece with David Conradt, drummer with avant garde bands, GOD and The Metacrats, in which a fur covered sculpture was smuggled into the opening night of a traveling Auguste Rodin exhibit at the Nelson-Atkins Museum and placed among the enormous Rodin busts. It was entitled "Rodent". Needless to say, only Mr Casados and Mr Conradt were amused.
In addition to painting, he’s done artwork for several bands, including CD covers for the award-winning New Orleans Jazz Vipers and jazz guitarist David Mooney.