I met my neighbor Rebecca today. She was photographing my next door neighbor so I stopped to chat and show off the little one. Rebecca is doing a photo day project wheee she posts photos of women on her website with a statement about what inspires them. She ended up photographing me as well. I don’t feel like I answered her question. I said what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, but I didn’t say why. I think in the moment, it would have taken too long, and so I’ll try to answer it now.
When I was a teenager, it was very important for me to have financial stability because growing up, we had none. At age 13 I had decided to wanted to be a commercial artist because I truly wanted to be an artist but it didn’t seem practical, there was no guarantee of financial success and I felt I would almost definitely be doomed to poverty. So commercial art was my compromise, I could stay close to the art world yet still be guaranteed a paycheck.
I started working as a graphic designer when I was 18… 1989. I was self taught and took it pretty seriously. I studied font charts like I was memorizing the periodic tables. But there are rare opportunities to express yourself artistically when someone else is writing the checks and I grew a little jaded. I moved towards more technical work. The creative side of things took a backseat and money and responsibility became my main motivators. I had become a middle manager for corporate America. I worked long hours and rarely created anything other than spreadsheets and gant charts.
Around 2000 I realized if I didn’t break the cycle, I’d wind up looking back at my life wondering what the he’ll I’d done. So I started pursuing art. I finally got my bachelors degree from CCA in 2008 and started showing my work almost monthly.
Here we are in 2010. The contract job that I took to try and pay down my student loans is done and I’m staring at a wide open future, finally! With this little one in my arms all day, it feels like it would be easy to give up the dream. She demands my full attention right now and honestly she’s so damn cute, I could easily just dedicate my life to loving her. But I see my role as mother also being her roll model and inspiration. It’s important for me to teach her that she should follow her heart. And I can’t be successful at that unless I follow my heart. And so although she is my biggest distraction right now, she’s also my biggest inspiration. You’ve got to follow your heart in this life and do thing thing that will give your life meaning and purpose. That’s not always the easiest path to follow so we’ve gor to be inspirations for one another. Each person I meet who is doing what they dream, is such a great motivator for me, and I want to be that person for my daughter.