So.... I am now done with Graduate School and my life can now start. I have been married for about 6 1/2 years now and we have two amazing boys Ashton and Chance. I will post some pictures a little latter. I have decided to do a blog because I have a lot of thoughts about the art world and where it is or where it is going. I am by no means a professional on the subject, I just want to voice what I think and where I stand in the whole mess.
Just some background on me. I was born and raised in Salt Lake City Utah. I went to UVSC (it is now known as UVU) and majored in Biology, I took a drawing class with Hyunmee Lee and my life changed. She is a great artist and I learned a lot from her, but I was coming from a true/false, right/wrong life application. The longer a person works on their drawing the better it is.... right? (well it use to be my thoughts) She gave a student an A because he/she had more of a voice in the drawing but they only worked on it for 30 minutes. I got a B- (and for a 4.0 student that was a bit harsh) so I argued with Prof. Lee about the grade. That is why I changed my major and started drawing and painting.
A couple years prior to this experience I lived in Washington D.C. I went to the National Art Museum and saw that they were showing an artist with a weird name. John Singer Sargent I thought it was an odd combination of names, but then again mine is too. I saw the traveling exhibit and I was amazed that someone could create a painting with such life! They were alive and still looked like paintings. This show is what peaked my interest in art as a whole.
I went to Brigham Young University's Illustration program after taking 3 Illustration classes from Perry Stewart (an amazing artist). I worked in the Illustration program because I wanted to be able to paint people like Sargent, no other program seemed to have the skill sets necessary to teach it and BYU was close enough. I then studied with Ryan Brown for a year in his Atelier School. I was accepted into the University of Utah's painting and drawing MFA program. At the same time I worked with Kamille Corry for a semester in Salt Lake. I wish I could have worked with her more but the MFA program consumed every minute of my working day. So that is how I got to where I am today. Keep checking the blog for the fun info and thoughts.