How I Got Started As An Artist
I have literally been creating art my entire life. The earliest days of getting coloring books and crayons from the dollar tree or even drawing on all of my furniture, tv stands, dressers, bed frames, and even the walls. It was this constant need or desire to want express myself through lines, colors, shapes, and words. At a very early age, I knew that this was something that I always wanted to do in my life. I knew that I wanted to be surrounded by art, art making, and creativity. Coming up with ideas, using color, and expressing myself felt like freedom and rebellion. I didn’t have to answer to nobody but myself. It always felt good to make art and it still feels that way today.
As I was getting older I was realizing how much art meant to me. I loved being around my friends and family so much but I also understood and appreciated my solitude. When I was “alone” I was able to tap into my own thoughts, feelings, emotions, and ideas to fuel my creativity and art making process. It didn’t take much for me to feel influenced or inspired to make work, I just did it. Put on my favorite music, gathered my art supplies, and the rest is history. No matter how it came out I was proud of myself, yes even the so called ugly ones. I would steal my teacher’s and friends colored sharpies so I could doodle in my notebook and sketchbook during class. Sharpies were my sacred tools for the longest, until I couldn’t take the smell anymore.
I didn’t start taking art seriously until I was in middle school. Up until that point sports was all that I could think about. It was also all my family would talk about honestly. It felt as if that was more important than the things that I was into. I am assuming that it’s very easy to connect with. Not everybody did art where I am from and the one’s who did felt magical in a sense. It was like I was apart of this secret group, these outliers. It felt like I had a sense of power, sometimes it felt nice for people not to understand me. Like there was this sense of mystery that I only knew about.
As a teenager I was noticing in myself that I was influenced by so many things. Hip-hop, skateboarding, football, basketball, art, graffiti, spirituality, and so much more. I also noticed how much I wanted to feel this sense of belonging with everybody. I wanted to kick it with the skaters, the jocks, the girls, the nerds, and everybody in between. I didn’t want to feel left out and for sure did not want others to feel left out. I was always longing for community wherever I went and I feel like that influenced my work. I began researching the things that I was into. Watching documentary films, comedy movies, looking at magazines, and browsing the internet. Discovering so much about the world. But my biggest influence was my hometown of Sacramento. Often times there was graffiti everywhere especially in the downtown area or on the walls of the freeway. There was something about it that was so special to me.
My dad showed me two movies that forever changed my views on hip-hop and graffiti art. The first one was “Breakin’”. Based in Los Angeles’ hip-hop scene in the 80’s, it basically follows these three dancers that are all different in their own ways and come together to create their own group. The other movie was “Beat Street”. This is where I got a lot of influence from one of the charcaters by name of “Ramo”. In opening scene you can see him in his Black Book writing his name with permanent marker. I rewinded that scene over and over again trying to copy his style, I thought that was the sickest thing to see a graffiti artist in a movie.
Throughout the years, I was growing pretty fast in my artistic and creative abilities. It was coming to a point where I would be making multiple pieces in one day and even more sketches in my sketchbook. I have always had this longing to get better and do better. Improvement can sometimes be my downfall and also my success. I feel like this comes from my years of playing sports but as I am getting older this is still true. It feels like a challenge, like I haven’t done the best thing ever yet. There’s a heightened sense of curiosity and wonder of what that could look and feel like to make my best work.
How I got started as an artist just came naturally. I just wanted to show off the things that I was into. I wanted to tap into myself and get lost in the possibilities of my ideas, opinions, thoughts, and feelings. Writing this, I am very proud of myself of where I have started and where I am at now with my work. I have made hundreds and thousands of pieces of work. It is quite the accomplishment, but I know that there is still so much more for me to do and make in this world. Stick around for more to come.
With peace and gratitude,
