Kraten was born in 1974 in San Francisco and moved to Huntington Beach in Southern California at a young age. Here he was exposed to the street culture of skateboarding and graffiti, the cultural influences which can be seen as inspiration in his art. Aaron Kraten began painting on, as he put it, “some trash at work;” his work was discovered by his boss and coworkers, and from this point, his artistic career carried him to the forefront of the modern Southern California art scene. “I feel my work is abstract and structured. The layers are important to me. The art is about life and I bring the viewer into that life by my imagery.” Aaron is a self-taught artist, using inspiration from his experiences to create works that create a dialogue of modernity with the viewer. His work is expressionistic, modern, stratified, depicting his journey of artistic creation, one layer at a time.