I used to draw. I couldn’t tell you when I started, but I have the feeling that I started drawing because of my cousin Michael. He was always drawing in a black sketchbook and I always thought it was cool. In the beginning I’m pretty sure I was just trying to be like him, and that feeling lingered even after it became my own thing.
I got pretty good, but never really had any formal training until college. I started off drawing Ninja Turtles and other cartoon characters. Eventually moving on to people. I would always be asked who I was drawing, and my response would always be the 6-11 year old version of “No one in particular.”
In high school I would draw in class, during lunch period, and after school and before bed. I wasn’t doing it to get better; I was just doing it to do it. It was a compulsion that had an ebb and flow. I would go months without drawing sometimes, but I would always find my way back to it. I would draw when I was depressed, happy, or content(the latter two being few and far between during my hormonal adolescence.)
When I didn’t get into any universities and ended up in community college I found myself in an art elective with Tom Halsall. I learned a lot in his class, but what I really found was that I could pursue this thing that I had already been doing for as long as I remembered. I took several classes with Tom(who I consider a mentor) and other teachers over my three year stay(at a two year school). I discovered a love for painting, writing, and photography there. I found my own little oasis of creativity in a place I, otherwise, didn’t feel I belonged. Eventually I met another mentor, Tim Keating, when I took my first photo class, but that is another story.
For a few years when my dad lived in White Plains, I would go to the diner after midnight to sit and draw. I would smoke cigarettes, drink coffee, listen to music, and chew on french fries while scratching away at the pages. On one such occasion a disheveled man sidled up to my table while I was lost in the pages and scared the hell out of me. I pulled my headphones aside and he launched into a sob story about how his car had broken down and that he was stranded and needed $10 to get home. He offered to sell me a copy of Meet the Klumps on VHS, and when I told him I only had enough money to pay for my food, he told me that I didn’t have to pay them for my food. I was knocked a bit off kilter by the whole situation, but quickly deflected and asked him if he was hungry. He looked at my plate and his eyes fixed on my untouched sandwich. So I slid it across the table, and he sat down and started to devour it. While he was eating I gathered my things and paid my bill, handed my waitress her tip, and left.
I went off the Boston to attend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and continue to explore my art. I took a lot of drawing classes my first year and a half. Life drawing classes for 16 hours a week, a drawing class where I would draw with my eyes closed trying to draw touch and sound, and I explored screenprinting. I met a lot of very talented people who humbled(some were so good they made me feel like I was finger painting) and encouraged me in ways I couldn’t imagine. I would draw with a room full of people in someone’s living room hunched over a sketch book.
I’d like to say I still doodle, but it’s rare. I couldn’t tell you when I stopped drawing… or why. It just happened. I barely even noticed it, because I would stop all the time, but eventually I’d just come back to it. It’s been seven years at least since I’ve drawn seriously. The last time I had a long period of sketching was when I was in Australia trying to soul search trying to figure out my life past bartending. My photography could take part of the blame. So could not being surround by artists or not having the leisure time I used to have. When I do sit down with a pencil and paper, I often don’t know what to draw, and my fingers seem clumsier than they used to. Like they have atrophied. I’ll try to draw what’s in my head, but I don’t have the ability to to faithfully create it. It frustrates me to the point where I just don’t want to do it.
It has been such a long time, and it’s a part of who I am. Who knows maybe this is just a longer break than normal, and the ember will stop smoldering and ignite again. I’d like to think so.