When I was a kid, my beautiful great-aunt Ola (still a lovely ol' gal at the tender age of 90) always told me, "Sugar, if you cain't say nothin' nice, don't say nothin' at all." As the years rolled by, I came to realize that my dear aunt, while usually a very wise woman in a homespun East Texas kind of way, could sometimes say things that were absolute bullshit.

I honestly can't imagine where my career would be if I had never been criticized as an artist. ALL criticism I've ever received has shaped and molded not just my work, but me as a person...whether someone was telling me they liked a piece but thought it could be improved, or was writing (actually a published, albeit very old, quote) that my work made them think of "...a drunken, redneck Norman Rockwell, inspired by comic books and bloated with his own ego...". It's all good, in a relative way.