I WAS BORN in Danbury, Connecticut. Memories from then are sparse save for the ones that I had to keep because they kept me.
The first time I realized I would be an artist for the rest of my life was when I was four or five-years-old. Mom and Dad took us to see Star Wars. Oh boy! The next day, I was in the classroom during recess drawing X-Wings and Tie-Fighters on a huge sheet of paper.
You might picture me a solitary child staring out of a window watching my classmates play. You'd be right. But I was never lonely. When those kids came in from recess and saw what I had done on this flimsy paper with my pencils, markers, and crayons...they wanted me to draw them something. Out with the firefighter, out with the doctor, out with the astronaut—I was going to be an artist!
I went to college. I even graduated from college. Everyone in the art classes there blew me out of the water. They talked in metaphors and considered me not-at-all. They could paint what Nietzsche wrote with a ball of wax, black paint, and some wood glue. Outclassed, out-metaphored, and all out of wood glue, I had no where to go. I decided the art world sucked because I couldn't decipher it. Off on great highway adventures, I looked for the roadsigns that would point me to people that would remind me of my heart’s potential, to cultures that would take me in and let me be a welcome stranger, to a restaurant that would employ me, and to a friend who understood me.
We took a detour on the way and landed in Austin, Texas. As soon as I stepped out of the car, I knew I was home. So, I stayed and not soon after that (ok…fourteen years later), I found a woman and married her. Not too long after that (ok…six years later), I became a proud father. And now here I am.
