Parts of me have never fit a box, and I'm learning that's good.

I was never the one in class who was "The Artist" I was never the one who got in trouble for drawing in the margins. I was the unremarkable quiet one.

Art started as a hobby. It started as something I could take or leave. "Yeah, it's fun I guess." Around high school I started taking art more seriously, but the art teachers were so BAD (props to being a teacher, it's super tough, and I'm sure they were trying... but I digress) and their rules so seemingly arbitrary, that it turned me off art for a good few years.

It was in the middle of one of my AG classes in college (I was gunna train tigers you see) that this really turned around. I was waiting after school for my ride with the other people in class. They were all talking, and I was hiding. Literally, in the shadows, so they couldn't find me. "Gee, maybe agriculture classes aren't for me."

I went to BYU-I to study art, and that's where my heart declared, "Yes. This is the place!" I was never the best in the class, but this was finally a place where I felt like I had something I could work towards.

Art has become such a huge part of my life and myself. It's how I express myself, how I process, how I regulate, it's how I function as a semi-functional adult. I am Storypaint.