Going Back In Time

How long have you been doing what you do now? Are you an artist, like me?

For the past month or so, I've been preparing for a series of artist interviews that will be posted here in the coming weeks. For each artist, I have crafted a specific and custom set of questions that will pertain to each one. But there is one question that will be the same for every artist featured: When did you know that you wanted to be an artist? For me, the answer is very simple. I've always known.

This photo is from around 1978 (captured by dad for "posterity"). I was painting some dough cookies that I made with my mom for our Christmas tree. But my desires to be an artist and memories of being creative come way before this. For as long as I can remember, I would occupy the bulk of my time at my small craft table in my room. I would spend hours emulating cards and decorations by making my own holiday decorations from construction paper and pipe cleaners for our front door. In our house, the fridge wasn't the center for display, it was our front door and bay window; the perfect gallery for the world to see. My parents nurtured my creative tendencies by enrolling me in Saturday Art School at a (still-functioning) art school in Phildelphia called Fleisher's. I still love the smell of paint combined with mineral spirits from those days. A couple of years later, when I actually sold a watercolor and drawing of the circus at a childrens' art gallery (also in Philadelphia) for Ten Dollars, there was no going back!

I just never wanted to do anything else. In New York City, this is a hard lifestyle to pull off, but the quest endlessly continues....