It started as a dream…

I never wanted to paint. Actually, I refused to.

Growing up, I focused on drawing. I thought mastery of a medium required exclusive use of it so I never learned how to paint. I was passionate about drawing and hope to one day make it my career, but things change and my life went in a different direction. by 17, I had all but stopped drawing.

In October 2019, while facing a long recovery following hip surgery, I decided to try painting. When my mom drove down to help out during surgery, she brought a few boxes of my old things with her. Among those things was an old, blank canvas.

I had no idea how to paint so, using a tiny paintbrush, I approached it like a drawing and chose a reference I felt would be difficult just to see if I could do it.

Honestly, I thought it was a fluke. Beginner’s Luck.

…then it became real.

I bought two more canvases to paint to fill the time until I was able to walk again without crutches. I intended it to end there, but with encouragement from family and friends, I kept painting. Four months later, I officially started my career as an artist.

Just two weeks later, Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic, and everything shut down. I’d been accepted into a group exhibition, but that was postponed indefinitely. Festivals and Artwalks were canceled, and galleries closed. There was nowhere to exhibit my work. I felt like it was over before I even had a chance to get started. After a few weeks of uncertainty, I decided to keep painting. I had my artwork photographed and digitized for prints and joined professional artist organizations. Since opportunities were still nonexistent locally, I applied to national juried exhibitions and my work was accepted into twelve that year. I became a member of several professional artist organizations including the South Mississippi Art Association and the International Guild of Realism. You can see memberships and past exhibitions, and awards Here.

The last two years have been quite a journey with several milestones including the creation of the puzzle line “Paintings to Puzzles” and finding a home in the gallery, Artwistic Revolution. I am excited to see where else this journey takes me.