My Journey
Finding Your Roots
Painting is just one of the many art forms I love to practice. When people ask how to improve their sense of creativity, I tell them to try other art forms like dance, music and sports so they can feel their mind form a relationship between the various hobbies. Every talent I have pursued in my life has helped me grow as an individual and brought me closer to self.
Fire Dancing
Fire spinning came into my life when I was 18 and really started things off for me with exploring new hobbies. Poi taught me the value of being a practitioner and showed me that I could learn anything if I practiced every. It was amazing to feel my mind grow as I learned to use both hands simultaneously and practiced learning every trick forwards, backwards, opposite, and mirrored. Watching fire performers at music events gave me the idea of traveling the world sharing this art form and inspiring others to try the game that changed my life.
Live Painting
In 2019 I attended a music festival called Lightning in a Bottle in California, where I saw live painters for the first time. I watched artists create paintings very quickly, displaying fast geometric movements with a paint brush that I didn't even know was possible. One of the painters told me about their lifestyle as an artist and how they would travel to music events around the world and get paid to make art for the events. His story was so inspiring and from that day I began to paint eight hours a day for the next two years. Live painting had a huge impact on the style I developed because I only had three days at the event to create something worth selling which meant making art quickly and efficiently.
Pottery
My Jr. Year of High School I took my first hand building ceramics class, and senior year I took a wheel throw where we learned to center clay and pull walls up into cylinders. Over the next four years, I enrolled in eight semesters of pottery and became a teacher assistant helping others with advanced throwing techniques. The greatest lesson came from my second teacher who told me not to save a single pot until the last week of class. He told me that by the end of the semester, I would be able to create pots that were 10 times better than the first three months of the class, so I destroyed every pot I made on the wheel, focusing on improving my ability to create thinner and larger pieces. I observed how the students time and energy was divided into decorating their pots with carvings and glaze while I solely focused on how to create larger pots. By the end of my first college semester, I was able to create elegant abstract forms that were delicate and strong with ease. Understanding this lesson helped as I switched to painting as I would paint over countless creations with white or black, simply to restart with a slight improvement in dexterity and understanding of how paint comes off the brush. This lesson in detachment is something I teach all my artist friends and I feel has been my greatest advantage with progressing quickly.
BMX
Growing up playing competitive team sports was frustrating for me because I felt like the team wasn't trying as hard. BMX freestyle came into my life at twelve years old and felt a powerful creative freedom that came from it. This was my first sport where I learned to play with fear and risk getting injured if you didn't land correctly and actually broke my back when I was 15 years old at a skatepark. Fear entered my mind before I tried a trick and didn't allow me to commit so I got really hurt. This injury truly inspired me to learn every new activity I could find because the doctors didn't know if I would be able to walk again. Training my body became a daily chore in order to support my weakened spine and brought me incredible awareness of my body which im forever grateful.
Snowboarding
A friend of mine took me snowboarding for the first time when I was 19 and loved it so much I went every weekend that winter. When I was 21 I got a job as a snowboard instructor at Sugar Bowl in Truckee, CA. Moving away from my hometown helped me grow as an individual and discover who I was around new faces. The nature at every resort was full of incredible views and the people who would ride every day became my family. There was a unique similarity between how the paint brush moves and the way a snowboard edge carves in the snow that gave me an advantage to mastering the flat brush. This discovery brought me so much joy and made it feel like I was snowboarding while painting.
Rock Climbing
My first job was working with kids at my local Rock Climbing Gym, helping with birthday parties and I worked my way up to coaching all ages. Working as a coach for six years taught me to observe my communication with others in order to gain their trust and encourage them to try the things they were afraid of. It laid out an amazing foundation of psychology for me and awakened my desire to help others. With my knowledge of climbing gear, I began to rig slacklines hundreds of feet in the air and continued to challenge myself to play with my own fear of heights. The climbing world taught me that it was possible to overcome my fears with practice and began my journey of self discovery by following this sensation.
Gymnastics
One day while at the rock climbing gym, someone saw me practicing backflips on a soft mat. She knew I coached kids in climbing and invited me to work at her gymnastics gym. I coached at Diablo Gymnastics for two years and found another gym when I moved to Truckee called Woodward Tahoe. This work space helped me with my own fears because I felt like I had to practice what I preached and would demonstrate the skills I was working on in order to inspire others to try. You can do anything you set your mind to and the only thing stopping you from achieving your biggest dreams is fear. This motto gave me the confidence to perform dance and live music in front of a crowd.
Guitar
Picking up the guitar at seventeen taught me a new concept of dexterity and muscle memory. The guitar showed me the importance of practicing every day and I could feel the imperfections if I skipped a couple days of practice. This awareness became apparent as I used my hands for pottery, painting and climbing. Playing instruments with friends puts you in a creative vortex and I felt the resemblance as I began painting with other people. Live painting in front of a crowd feels the same as soloing on a guitar because no one knows when you make a mistake and you can always cover up any mistakes by improvising. My background with guitar has been helping me with my new outlets of electronic music production and djing live shows.
Writing
When I first moved away to live in Truckee, I was alone with my thoughts for the first few months. Not really having any friends up there, I started to journal and make drawings of political cartoons. The words started to flow and the meaning of my drawings developed with my mind. Writing really helped me process my emotions helped me connect with others by sharing my thoughts as poetry. The four elements of Hip-Hop are Break Dance, MC (mic controller), Djing, and Graffiti Art and because I had been practicing all four elements without realizing it, gave me a new sense of identity. Rapping out loud really helped vent my frustration with the world and transmute my message into spreading positive affirmations to uplift human consciousness.