“Put your talent into your work, but your genius into your life” Oscar Wilde

My mom use to say, “God gives everyone at least one talent and if you don’t use it, it’s a sin.”

The reason this thought came to me today is a friend of mine made a comment the other day when we were hanging out at the house. He was looking around at some of my artwork and looking at the guitars I have leaning on their stands.

He said, “You are so talented, I wish I could draw, sing or play an instrument.”  I told him, “You have a talent you just haven’t found it yet!”

I’ve always loved drawing and painting as far back as I could remember. My mom still has a finger painting I did in the first grade with big blue ribbon still attached to it.

When I so very young I remember we couldn’t afford to buy plain white paper just to draw or color on so I would tear the blank sheets of paper out of the front and back of the few books we had at home. My mom tanned my hide for that when she found out.

I took very art class I could take while I was in high school. After graduating high school I attended the Harris School of Art on Franklin for 3 hours a night, 5 days a week for almost 4 years.

I studied art history, photography, classic oil painting, pen & ink illustration, water coloring, and sculpting.

I worked for a small advertising agency in Nashville for only about two weeks after leaving art school. I was stuck in a 4x6 cubical and a supervisor who didn’t have an ounce of artistic talent in his body, criticizing every illustration I would submit. I quit the ad business, never to return.

I believe talent is in some way genetic because my father, who was a mechanical engineer, could draw the most precise and technically accurate machine drawings freehand, I’d ever seen. He also loved to play old honky-tonk tunes on the guitar. He taught me a few chords and let me play his guitar up until I bought my first guitar with money I had saved from mowing lawns when I was about 14 years old.

My brother was a wiz at drawing comic book characters. He had a full size Batman & Robin drawing on the wall in our room, he had drawn on old packing paper that our grand mother had sent.

My mom played piano and loved music, and still does to this day. She plays piano for her

church at the ripe young age of 76.

When I graduated high school over 30 years ago, a few old friends and I started a garage band. I sang a little and played the drums. We played mostly southern rock like Lynyrd Skynyrd, .38 Special, Marshall Tucker, ZZ Top but also quite abit of top 40 songs for parties and dances. We even learned a few country songs too to quail the rednecks out in the audience.

Over a few years we became pretty good. Members of the band came and went but we started to play bars and clubs on the weekends and took any gig we could get our hands on. Anything from parties, picnics to weddings and music fests.

We forked out a lot of are own money to buy studio time to cut a demo tape. We went as far as to sign a one year contact with Blue Ridge Mountain Publishing. We wrote a few songs but none were ever picked up or recorded by any major artist. So the dream of being rock stars kind of just faded away. As we know, life begins to get in the way. Bills need to be paid so needless to say we all just went our own way. I’ve never had any regrets from those days because we honestly gave it our best shot.

The point of all this is, the work I do now and for the last 20 years has nothing to do with art or music.

Where we started out in life with our hopes, dreams and aspirations may not be where we thought we would end up.

I wouldn’t have it any other way!