The Giant and the Mirror.(how my art took hold)

Picture this: a quiet, shy kid slouched in the back row, never doing his homework, eyes half-focused on lessons that might as well have been in Sanskrit. The chalkboard was a blur. The only thing that made sense was the doodle spilling across the margins of his notebook, blooming like a vine in spring. That kid? That was me.

One day, the regular teacher was absent, replaced by the principal—a towering, bearded figure who looked like he’d stepped out of Norse mythology. Naturally, I tried to disappear. No eye contact. No sudden movements. Just survive the day.

Then… thud. His finger landed on my doodle. My heart stopped. This is it.

But then a soft, surprisingly gentle voice:
“That’s beautiful.”

Wait, what?

I dared to look up. His eyebrows had softened, his face calm. Approval? From him?

“But you need to do the math, son,” he added with a grin.

Fair enough. That was his job. But in that tiny moment, he cracked a door I hadn’t known existed. Maybe, just maybe, I had something to offer the world.

I never really found my stride academically, but art became my lifeline. The one thing I was good at. The thing that made sense. It became my identity. So when high school ended, art school felt like the obvious next step.

Art school in the 1980s was a hazy dreamworld. The vibe: art is everything. Which, I eventually realized, meant art was also… nothing. If everything is art, how do you actually see the world? I felt like I was living inside a mirror, endlessly reflecting myself.

I needed to step out of that mirror. I needed a real job. A life that mattered—not to the art world, but to people.

In 1993, my mom passed away—a loss that left everything feeling off-kilter. Around the same time, I was taking an anatomy course at massage therapy school, originally to improve my figure drawing. Two very different experiences, quietly shaping the path ahead.

I quickly became captivated by the human body—not as lines on paper, but as an intricate, living system. The student massage clinic became more than practice; it became a place where I could make a real difference, and even find a bit of healing for myself.

It was then that it clicked: this could be the thing. A way to connect, to do something meaningful. So I dove in, trained as a massage therapist, and never looked back.

For a while, I thought I had left art behind for good. But about 15 years later, something started gnawing at me. Not regret exactly—but incompletion. So I dusted off the old paint set.

This time, art wasn’t my identity. It wasn’t something I needed to prove. It was an old friend - someone I could share a life with.

Now, I have a family I love, a career I believe in, and that old easel standing by my side. Not as a crutch. Not as a mirror. Just… there. Waiting for the next story to tell.