As a child and as a young man I was advised by my relatives, movies, TV, my employers, and each institution of learning I attended that art was an accessory and that if I were to pursue art, it must be in very specific ways.  Both my institutional and my home environments were focused more on conservation than creation.  At one point, my elementary school removed art as a course of study.  Although my mother stepped up to teach art for free, I was always encouraged by my family and my entire community to avoid the idea of art as an occupation or even a part-time or hobbiest pursuit.

One day, I walked into a grocery store and saw the very pastels in the same packaging as they had been in almost 30 years prior sitting with a dust layer on a shelf.  I associated this specific set of pastels with one of the more traumatizing experiences I viewed as a cornerstone behind why I would never consider producing art, even as a lark.

I bought them as an act of defiance--an act that took an entire lifetime to overcome who I had been shaped to be.  I bought drawing paper, too.  I headed home, put them on the center of the kitchen table and stared at them for several days.  All of the lessons of my youth and the negative self-talk I had been programmed to apply to any consideration of art flooded my being.  I can't imagine anyone could understand how powerful it was to create something with thick strokes, ignoring how much each pastel cost and focusing on the endorphins of my new freedom 

Art is one my the keys to understanding and enjoying who I am and who I wish to be.  I also find it to be a portal to understanding impermanence and empathy.  My art is an expression of who I am, an exercise in creation, a meditation on manifestation, and one of tools to understanding how I might better understand who, where, and why I am.