Education
Cherry graduated from high school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma where his sister, C. J., was his Latin teacher.
Cherry graduated from high school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma where his sister, C. J., was his Latin teacher.
He has been nominated eleven times for Hugo Awards, and 18 times for Chesley Awards (with 8 wins), and he is a past president of the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists. Cherry is the brother of the science fiction writer C. J. Cherryh ("Cherry" is the original spelling of the last name of the family), and has painted cover art for some of her books as well as books by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Robert Asprin and Lynn Abbey (Thieves" World series) and Piers Anthony. He also took art classes in high school.
He graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a Bachelor of Arts then earned his law degree from the University of Oklahoma College of Law and was admitted to the bar in Oklahoma.
He began working for a law firm that specialized in regulations affecting the trucking industry. When this industry was deregulated by the United States. government, he found his law skills less marketable.
Cherry had sold his first professional work in 1980 and by 1982 was working as a lawyer part-time. In 1984, he made the decision to try to make a living doing work he really enjoyed, drawing and painting and left his law practice.
Beginning in the mid-1990s, Cherry began illustrating in the gaming insustry, including cards for the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game and computer games.
He left Oklahoma in 2000 and began working full-time for Microsoft, creating the marketing art for Age of Mythology. Cherry was the Artist Guest of Honor at ConJosé, the 60th World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, California in 2002. Cherry has two children and lives and works near Dallas, Texas.