I do what I do because of something deep within want to create and express things that are visual in my mind. I enjoy making visuals come to life on most any kind of media. I also enjoy expressing ideas and notions visually for others. The most compensation I get from creating is a smile and to hear them say, “That’s it” or “This is what I’m looking for”. That’s worth more to me than gold or even money.

 

Art stimulates and excites my senses. I get so many emotions from creating. Depending on the subject matter, I sense happiness, especially if its colorful, sadness, eeriness, anger, romance, peace, laughter and even hunger.

 

My inspiration just comes and grabs me. An idea would come to me and I must turn it into reality. I can remember at the age of eight years old, well, I always loved coloring and had many of coloring books. This particular day, I was looking at my Disney, The Aristocats coloring book and listing to the sound track of the movie.

 

Looking at the characters, I thought to myself, I can draw these characters and that’s what I did. At first it seemed a bit of a challenge but I chugged my way through each character. Finally I completed my sketches. They were a bit crude by my mom, aunt and cousin thought they were great. They were and are such an inspiration to me. From the expressions they conveyed in viewing my work, gave me the fuel to do more and more if no more than to see the expressions and gestures from them.

 

Another occasion is in school my third grade teacher gave out an assignment consisting of a line drawing and attached behind it a sheet of line paper. The object of the assignment was to create a story about the picture you see then afterwards color the picture. Well me, being the “crayon nut” I did the assignment correctly for a short while then I would make out like I wrote the story but didn’t and colored  the picture anyway until after a while these stories had to be turned in and that’s when I got “Cold Busted”. I had colorful pictures and no stories to go with them.

 

By the time I was between 11 and 13 I began venturing out using different media like acrylics, watercolors, chalk pastels, color pencils and markers. I explored different subjects and techniques. I think the most difficult and challenging to do is the human body and the human face—both you would think are very simple but so complex.

 

College is where I really had the opportunity to be truly challenged and push my brain to the limit with such a variety of scenarios and problems to solve using even more different media. This was such a high. Here is where I also learned about the masters of the past and present. My favorites are Botticelli, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Salvador Dali.