I didn't set out to be a painter. In fact I was a metal smith major in college. I had my life all planned out. I would finish my courses, graduate, do an internship in Italy, then scurry my way up the chain in a jewelry house-- then fly out on my own making jewelry for everyone! Ok--so I had big dreams. I was pretty self assured, and was happy to be walking in my own shoes. Then shit happened. I got really sick-- from what I didn't know at the time-- and had to move home. I took a year off school. When I did go back I went to a college in town. Well, they had no jewelry program. Only a beginner class, which I ended up teaching. The school was small, and at the time we had one sculpture teacher- a pot head potter and a painting professor. The sculpture teacher was gone after my first semester, which left pottery and painting. I should have left then and gone to medical school like my parents wanted me to-- but alas I was born to be tortured. I didn't hit it off well with the pot man, and continually received shitty grades in his class. I basically had to take his class if I wanted to get my credits to graduate withing a 10 year span. In painting I was a little more happy. My professor happened to be cocky and challenged conventional realism. I for one was intrigued. My abstract-ish paintings were never grade winners in high school- but this place seemed to be for me. The more I studied expressionism, modernists, minimalism, color-- the more I liked it. The bigger the better. There is a beauty in simplicity, in mark making itself-- in the fundamentals. "Brushstrokes never lie," my professor told me, and he was right. You can see passion or complacency with a single scrawl. I love all art, and could look at works endlessly. So this is how I went from a jewelry designer to a painter.
Did you start out as a painter and end up a sculptor? How about potter to a print maker... A writer to a singer or a maybe a banker to a poet...
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