I'm a contemporary artist with a bit of an unexpected background. I was in my 20s before I ever went to an art museum. I grew up in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road in rural Arkansas, an hour from the nearest movie theater.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I grew up in a very small, rural country town, and we didn't really have 'the arts.'
I feel like I became an artist by default. I went to art college, but my interest was always more towards film than painting or sculpture.
Two of my grandfathers had been artists, lifelong oil painters, so I was exposed to art very young. I've always been interested in it, although I never pursued it as a career or even as an avocation.
Making a living out of acting sounded like science-fiction when I was growing up. I didn't know anyone around me who lived from anything related to art.
I grew up in a wood cabin on Puget Sound in Manchester, Wash. My family taught me to appreciate the arts and the outdoors, and I still yearn for the absolute silence I experienced there when I was young.
When I was 17, I met many artists, and it started to become this conversation with artists out of which all of my exhibitions grew.
My mother was a high school arts teacher, so I was always surrounded by the arts.
I grew up going to museums. I was privileged to discover art and artists in a very personal way.
I started out to be a painter and was born into the theater.
I was born and raised in North Little Rock, Arkansas. I was 15 when I got my first job serving food to the residents in a retirement home - 22 years later I would shoot my first film in one.