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My Journey into art!

I am going to start at the end and end at the beginning here because I want to update my journal to reflect who I am today while not losing who I was then.

Today:
Only one short year ago, and one short year after discovering art, I was preparing to take the LSAT (Law School Admission Test) and applying to law schools. My intention was not to become a lawyer but instead to make my way to Washington D.C., You see everyone that is anyone in the most corrupt city on the planet holds a law degree or two and I felt compelled to join the ranks. I held onto a 4.0 and letters of recommendation from every professor that I had taken a class from. I had worked at the Colorado State Capitol and gained many important contacts. I even had a crotchety old bastard who holds the titles of doctor and professor helping me with my studying and applications. I was going to change the world!

So what happened to me?
Today, the day before Christmas in 2006 I have no score on the LSAT, I am not packing and preparing for my journey to Harvard or Berkeley, and I no longer have dreams of joining the ranks of the zombie brigade in D.C. I did graduate with honors in the field of Political Science exactly one week ago, and I could have gone to almost any law school I chose, but somewhere in he last year that particular fork in the road suddenly developed a severe case of road closed. The fork was not closed because of lack of ability but more like a case of extreme fog, sometime during the spring my mind began wandering in a new direction. In that semester I was working at the capitol, taking a full load of Poly Sci classes, and working on a project for a painting class I was taking. I thoroughly enjoyed all aspects of where my life was going but, it was the painting project that was dragging me along by the nose. After I left class every day I drove around taking pictures of Americans who found themselves living in the streets. After leaving the capitol I wandered around seeking the perfect composition that would complete my project. Through that process I found my mind wandering in the world of Political Science, and my heart opening up to the reality of humanity. At the end of the spring semester I had not completed my project, and still have not, but I had faced the outcome of the political process face to face, and come to a deeper understanding of what it meant to create art as well.

While this experience did change the way I saw the world it was not sufficient in changing my direction. The fog had rolled in but not engulfed me just yet. That came over the summer and can be blamed on one class and one professor. Drawing and painting from photographs was all I knew up until this point, or at least all that I felt I could accomplish. This idea so encompassed my art that a friend of mine once called me a human Xerox machine, a machine that could not even comprehend creativity. My summer classes began as usual and the life drawing class was no different. The first week of class we did some sketching and a lot of looking and discussing. Our first assignment was given over the first weekend of classes and entailed drawing a self portrait. While I was sure that others in the class were going to accomplish this task by looking into a mirror, drawing from life was still rather intimidating to me. So, like rushing water I found the path of least resistance and took a picture in the mirror to draw from. The outcome of my first ever self portrait was praised and admired but taking the easy route had left me in the same old rut. The following week was a rush of political discussion and an endless expanse of charcoal dust without any sort of accomplishment. My professor saw the discomfort in my face and the painful outcomes on my drawing pad as a result. She and I had often talked about politics after class so in depth discussions between the two of us were not a new thing. However, at the end of this week our discussion went from our normal bitch session about President Bush into the realm of what I was not accomplishing in class. Her suggestion was for me to change things up, to try something new. She wanted me to stop trying to draw the figure and start creating a drawing based on the figure. While I was not too sure what this meant, like any good student I complied. Over the weekend I picked up a pad of colored paper and come Monday I drug in my new pad as well as every piece of drawing paraphernalia I owned.

I began the new week experimenting with different mediums and tried my best to create something that was interesting to look at. My first attempts, while disastrous in outcome, served as a platform for change. It was about midweek that I had picked up my conte crayons and pastels and began to work feverishly at applying them to the paper. I found myself in a different world, almost possessed as I scribbled all over the pages. It wasnt until after the class was over and the model had left that I had noticed something in my drawings that I had never seen before, creativity. I went home with a rare feeling of contentment and a lighter step due to the lifting of an invisible weight I had strapped to my shoulders. I worked all weekend on papers for my political science classes with only an occasional thought given to my artwork. Monday morning rolled around though, and I found a new excitement that was to me, unexplainable. I couldnt wait to get to class but I wasnt sure why. Looking back today I now know that it was because I had finally broken through my self imposed prison of exact replication.

My first few finished pieces after this epiphany are not much to look at for most people, but for me they serve as an opened door which had always been locked before. Throughout the rest of the semester I continued to get lost in the process and my drawings continued to improve, objectively I think I can say now. This new direction in my art was also turning my life in a new direction as well. But, the final straw was a simple drawing that had taken about 20 minutes to complete and contained a minimal amount of strokes. My Figure drawing 24 seemed to draw itself, and when complete, reached out and grabbed me. After finishing I took a few steps back to contemplate what it meant, I sat in silence and simply observed what it was that I had just done. After a short period of consternation and a longer period of enlightenment I stepped forward into the right fork of the road and into my new life.

I graduated on December 16th of 2006 with my second degree in Political Science, and instead of heading off to law school and D.C. I am now waiting, not so patiently I might add, to begin my new path as an art student working on a BFA in January of 2007.

Yesterday:
I feel like a little kid all over again, one that has reached the time in their life where everything is amazing. The way things look, smell, feel, and even the way they inspire emotion, are what we all experience after seeing something for the first time. We learn what is sour and what is sweet. We develop attractions to colors and detractions to smells. The newness of everything consumes our life and creates who we are.

I spent more than 8 years trying to be Tom Cruise in every pool hall in the central US, as well as Matt Damon in every card room, advertised or not. My life on the road of gambling was great and gave me a living and a lot of excitement. But something was missing, the rest of the world. I spent every day hiding from the sunlight, and every night choking down smoke as well as buying and selling every hustler line you can imagine. I was like a druggie looking for his next fix. I moved from one pool hall to the next searching for a game, and more often then not, ended up at a poker table when none could be found. I lived by the stars and the dollar bill. When I came out of my lightless world I had no idea what the rest of the world even looked like under sunlight. I couldnt even imagine where people went during the day nor why they went there.
Well, at the young age of 28, I decided to go back to school. The shock of the daylight, at first, was almost more than I could handle, and the hustle and bustle that everyone else seemed to find normal was something that I had spent my entire life hiding from. But after the election in 2000 I felt the need to understand how the rest of the world worked, so Higher Ed seemed like the natural choice. I spent two years converting from my night life of gambling into a world of education and sunlight. I kept playing poker and pool for much of that time but also attended classes and earned an AS in Software Programming.

After the downfall of the economy, provided to us by Bushs policies and 9-11, there was not a job to found though. So, like most students at the time I choose to stay in school. One of my professors had introduced me to a local candidate who I ended up working for. I then changed my lifes direction once again. I changed my major to political science and even changed schools.

My new school had as a requirement to achieve an undergraduate degree, at least two art classes. I bitched and moaned, like most non-artistic people, at the thought of having to draw and actually show other people the outcome, but I didnt have a choice. I signed up for a drawing class and complained all the way there.

However, somewhere along my journey through this class I found that I had a small amount of talent, and an unknown love for this thing called art. My sketchpad became my American Express; I never left home without it. Every free second I could find I was drawing. My teacher gave me an A and much praise as well as another life dilemma. I was now wondering whether I should change my major once again.

In the end I decided to stay with political science and just fill up all of my electives with art classes. I began then to experiment with other art forms as I searched through deviantart for things that I liked. I found charcoal drawing and had to do some. I saw paintings and decided I had to take a class on the subject. I have been drawn in by digital art and even graffiti and now must once again experience a new thing. So like a child I am wondering through a world which is entirely new, and redefining who I am as a person everyday.