I’ll Always Be an Artist

I was asked to enter a piece in a local charity art show, so I painted a quick landscape based on my time in Chico.

While I was working on the farm, I spent a lot of time sitting in a truck waiting to refill tractors with fertilizer. During those quiet stretches I would sketch, draw, and photograph the world around me.

What struck me later was how familiar that felt.

I realized that I always seem to do this with jobs.

No matter what I was hired to do, I always seemed to end up doing two jobs. The one they paid me for and the one I couldn’t stop doing.

Art.

When I was a kid I was told constantly that I was talented. I think that encouragement helped push me forward. At some point the encouragement faded, but the need remained.

I drew because I needed to.

I was dealing with a lot as a kid. I often felt like an outsider. Sometimes I didn’t even feel comfortable in my own skin.

Art helped me navigate that.

It became a compass.

When I didn’t know what to do, I made art and somehow found my way forward.

In college, one of my professors stood in front of the class and said that if we were there for an easy A, we should leave. If we were there because we thought an art degree would lead to an easy life, we should leave. If we were there to make money, we should leave.

There were better degrees for all of those things.

But if art was the first thing we thought about when we woke up and the last thing we thought about before bed, then we were in the right place.

If we were willing to struggle because making art mattered that much, then we belonged there.

I remember feeling seen for the first time.

Not talented.

Not creative.

Seen.

I started to understand that art wasn’t just something I enjoyed. It wasn’t decoration. It wasn’t a hobby.

It was how I made sense of the world.

I worked hard in college, but I didn’t always work smart. I spent too much time developing my strengths and not enough time addressing my weaknesses.

Eventually that same professor told me I couldn’t paint.

What hurt wasn’t that he was wrong.

It was that he was right.

I had ideas, but I didn’t yet have the skills to communicate them.

At the time I took it as a rejection.

Years later I see it differently.

I think he knew exactly what he was saying.

I think he saw me wandering.

I think he saw a student hiding behind ideas because ideas came easily while painting did not.

And I think he knew that if I was ever going to communicate the things he saw inside me, I would have to learn the language first.

Painting is a language.

Some people speak it better than others.

I don’t think he was telling me to quit.

I think he was telling me where the work was. And for the last twenty years I’ve been trying to learn how to speak more clearly.

After college, people stopped asking me about my art and started asking how I was going to make money.

Being an artist started to feel less like a direction and more like a secret shame.

So I got jobs.

Data entry.
Receptionist.
Marketing designer.
Office manager.

A lot of different jobs over the years.

But every single one had something in common.

I was always sketching on lunch breaks.

Always filling notebooks.

Always painting in my head while doing something else.

When a relationship ended and I didn’t know how to process the loss, I turned to art.

When work became overwhelming, I turned to art.

When life felt uncertain, I turned to art.

It never fixed everything.

But it always gave me a direction to walk.

Over time I developed my abstract cities, my word portraits, and countless other ideas that never quite left me alone.

Selling art and making art turned out to be very different skills, so there were plenty of detours along the way.

Part-time jobs.

Full-time jobs.

Side jobs.

And recently, even a temporary return to farm work.

But through all of it, the pattern remained the same.

No matter what I was doing for money, I was still making art.

Still thinking about art.

Still solving painting problems in my head.

Still dreaming.

That realization hit me while sitting in a truck in Chico.

More than twenty years after that college class, I finally understood why I felt so seen that day.

Because the professor was right.

I am an artist.

Not because I’m successful.

Not because I have a degree.

Not because I’ve sold paintings.

Because I can’t stop.

I never could.

I can work other jobs.

I can leave the studio.

I can spend months focused on something else.

But sooner or later I’ll be sketching in the truck again.

Or filling another notebook.

Or staring out a window solving a painting problem nobody else knows exists.

I often wish I could be someone else.

I’m a good employee. I work hard. I learn quickly.

Most things have come easier to me than art.

But I can’t turn this off.

I’ll always be the guy sketching in the truck.

I’ll always be the guy painting in his head while everyone else is talking.

I’ll always be the guy who can’t leave a good idea alone.

I’ll always be an artist.