When you look at the history of art, you see that artists devoted centuries of time and effort to glorifying suffering. They immortalized religious subjects, elevating the saints and martyrs by emphasizing the torture and pain those men and women had endured. I have never been so strong that I could laugh in the face of my problems. Suffering matters, but it is not the final answer in life, and that is what I’ve endeavored to emphasize in my work. My work is a celebration of life, and a reminder that new beginnings are a part of nature. I don’t need to be reminded of suffering, but I do want to remember that life can be beautiful.....
I was born and raised in the small town of Kidron, in rural Ohio, about an hour south of Cleveland. I always enjoyed drawing as a child, but I didn’t become serious about it until I was fifteen. That’s when I decided I wanted to go to art school after high school, and specifically, it was my dream to go to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Unfortunately, my mother, a fundamentalist Christian, didn’t approve of my love of art and did everything she could to prevent my going. We fought what was for me an increasingly cruel and desperate battle of mental and emotional attrition that lasted three years........