When I was a teenager I remember hearing talk of “lazy artists”. These were people seen wandering around this small town without regular jobs, perceived as doing nothing because they weren’t producing what was considered “art”. Fast forward to today and I find that it’s me wandering around without a “real” job, looking for inspiration in this changing town… just one of the misconceptions about being an artist :  that you work only when you’re behind the easel.

People often ask me; when did I know I wanted to be an artist? or how long have I been one? I remember telling people when I was 8 years old that I wanted to be a painter. At the time I was was enrolled in an adult painting class because in this small town there just weren’t any classes for children.
I’m always on the fence about whether I think people are born artists or whether it’s a learned thing. Maybe it’s a mix of both..with desire and obsession being the thing we’re born with.

I always thought of myself as the average kid in grade school until I realized quite early  that most of my piers weren’t concerned about how light fell on things, or how everything could be broken down to lines and shapes, or what colours could I mix to make “that” colour? Anyone who can identify with these things will probably agree that it is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is the incredible joy and satisfaction you get from some of the work you produce, the curse is that your eyes never stop tracing lines, mixing colours and the brain never stops thinking of images to produce. The only rest? keep working, keep producing. The better I think I’m getting, the happier I am 🙂