Post 1

We are born to live our best life no matter what obstacles are placed in front of us. We do our best. We try hard sometimes and sometimes maybe, we don't. Life is not fair. "A wiser fellow than myself once said, sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes the bar well, he eats you."** We have our successes and our failures. Getting to the end and being happy with what you have done is the ultimate success. I'm living this life with a successful outcome in mind. I have failed many times and have said the same exact words as Zoe Lister-Jones's character Anna (audio above) at least once in my life. I'm kidding, it's more like one hundred times in a year. But I took chances, made choices and felt failure. Those experiences have taught me to be humble, sometimes brave and occasionally angry, a "WHAT HAVE I DONE," kind of angry. But that's all for future therapists, this blog is about creating art and how it's affected my life.

For me art has been both success and failure. The great thing about art is; if you stick with it long enough failure can become success. Art has given me joy and pain. Art has made me humble and brave. Art has made me take chances and given me opportunities. I'm not sure I had a choice when it comes to art. My earliest memories were drawing pictures from my imagination at the age of six. While sitting at my grandmothers kitchen counter, I would draw scenes of battle substituting fruit for people, such as coconut helicopters, banana warships and little raisin warriors, all while listening to the adults cook, talk and argue. There is a therapist story in there somewhere. But ever since I picked up a pencil or crayon, art has been somewhere for me to exist. It has given me somewhere to be, something to be and something to help me understand.

I'm not a famous artist. I'm just an artist. I don't claim to know more than anyone else. I'm primarily a self taught artist with no academic degree. Now that I'm getting older (49 last December) i'm feeling more confident with my art and myself. Creating this blog to keep myself engaged with my art is an exercise of love. I hope that you follow along and witness my success and failures. If you like, send me an email and we can have a discussion. I would like to keep it light with lots of book, movie and song quotes as well as a good joke or anecdote about my life. But for the most part this is a blog about art and life. Grammar Nazis be kind.

Thanks for reading, TTFN

Getch

**This quote is from The Stranger, Sam Elliotts character in The Big Lebowski. He is actually saying Bear not Bar, but Bar sums up my life a bit better, since I live in NYC and don't see to many bears. I do see a lot of bars!