How I became an Artist...

Art is one of my true loves and I enjoy creating analog as well as digitial works of art. The first time I recall creating a piece of art was when I was in the first grade (around 6 years of age). I was coloring with crayons and really loved the colors as they almost flowed onto paper. :)

I recall my mother taking me to art classes while I was in grammer school and how I enjoyed painting and learning how to make birds and trees. I lived at the beach in the south east and I loved the ocean and it's vastness and never ending horizon. After moving to the mountains of east Tennessee when I was 12, I still never forgot the ocean and created drawings of it while in school...

I was surprised that I would occasionally win awards in school for my art. I recall once walking down a hallway at school and seeing one of my paintings of the ocean taped to the wall with many other student's works of art and that I had won first prise. I was so surprised and didn't even know that I was in a contest.. When graduating from Junior High, I was again surprised to receive an award for being an artist.

After I left school, I went to work in a candle factory for a year. And then I went to work as a silk screen printer in an athletic company. Factories left a strong impression in my mind of being places where people lost their souls. Suppression seemed to be strong and I was always defiant and speaking out about the working conditions. It was here that I realized that I could never just be quiet and accept suppression. Needless to say, I ended up getting into trouble for this. :)

I recall leaving the athletic factory one day and before I got in my friends car, I took my shoes off (they were covered in paint) and left them in the parking lot. I knew that I didn't need them anymore and that I would never go back. My path was to be elsewhere in this world.

In the following years I ended up doing a self study of the arts in New Orleans and in order to pay rent I got a job at a local hospital as an admissions clerk. It was here that I discovered computers and met a programmer who I became close friends with. I created some paintings and ink drawings but spent more time exploring New Orleans and working than doing art. :) I ended up leaving this place and returning home when my mother got cancer. As I needed to be in that area while she was still alive, I decided I would attend school and start a career in computers. I would not study art because I felt that it would never support me. So in 1986 I got an associate's degree in computer science and have worked with computers ever since.

It wasn't til the winter of 1990 that I rediscovered my art and realized that I was truly an artist at heart. I almost died that winter from the flu and recall going into the study one day and finding some of my paintings from many years past. I decided that before I die, I would paint again. So I got paper and watercolors and started painting. For six months while I recovered, I painted over 100 paintings and realized that this was what I loved most.

I am not sure why I never really thought of myself as an artist. It's as if I felt I was never good enough and I would always think I should be doing something else. But I now realize that I have always been an artist and that I love creating visual works. It just makes me so happy to be creating things that are colorful. They make me smile...

I still work with computers but now use them as tools to display art and share what I love with others....

-lile

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