I could draw from a very early age. I remember, when I was about four,
drawing a shield on the side of a cardboard box so that I could climb into
a fantasy police cruiser and be Broderick Crawford on the 50's television
drama, Highway Patrol.
I also remember many of my first drawings were of revolvers. Apparently I
watched a little too much tv.

As I grew up, everyone knew what I'd be. It was obvious. I could draw very well.

But, did that make me an artist?

When I was in high school, I entered the Draw Me contest to win a
scholarship for an artist's correspondence course. I didn't win, but I took
the course anyhow and paid for it with a paper route, throwing the Dallas
Morning News. Evenings I sat in my room and did lessons in transparent
wash, pen & ink, and charcoal pencil.

Was I an artist yet?

I was an art major in college, worked in an art store, and then started my
career as an art director. At home I tried to paint, but couldn't. I had
nothing to say.

Twenty years passed. When I was 42, I looked back. On the eleven-year,
childhood separation from my mother that even now cannot seem to be
recovered. On my best friend who doused his car with gasoline and set
himself on fire while I was away at college. On the failure of my
sixteen-year marriage and the passing of youth's warm sun. And on the
rediscovery of a loving God who'd been there all along.

Now I had something to say. Now I was an artist.

Dallas critic, Jim Fowler, wrote, "Painters attempt to capture the world
around them and color the image with a little bit of their insides; artists
attempt to capture the world inside them using the images they see in the
external world."

What's inside of you? What do you have to say?