Art Career: |
I have a few more pieces not photographed and on the site just yet, and actually have some of my best works yet to come, but currently still just works in progress. |
I've always considered myself an artist. When I was a boy I would spend hours drawing and doing craft work projects. I think my parents recognized my desire for art when they saw how well I did with the then popular "paint by numbers." I eventually was sent to take art classes at The Gulfcoast Art Center In Belleair at around the age of 12. One of my acrylic paintings "Old mill in stream" won an award in the local Belleair Bluffs art contest. I also one an award in 5th grade for a water color painting I did of an old english fighting ship. As an adolescent, I continued to paint in acrylics. I also took classes in ceramics, making jewelry, painting in water colors, and drawing. I won 2 blue ribbon awards when I was 17 at the Largo County Fair. It made me feel very confident about my artistic ablilities. However, one thing that one of my art teachers at The Gulf Art Center imbued upon me, really stuck out like a sore thumb, "If you're going to be an artist, you're going to be starving." Some how, despite my passion and talent, that really fear of being poor really affected my decision choose art as my primary career path. Having many other talents and passions as well, as in business, computers, and science, I made a concious choice to pursue something that would bring me a fuller life that didn't restrict me into a box. I chose to enter in to business as my primary path in life, although later I would often refer to myself as an artist who was in business. In college and in my 20's I focused on a lot of things, but unfortunately art took a back seat. I didn't do a whole lot with my art in college, and unfortunately after my career took off at The Silver Queen I hardly touched a paint brush or did much at all due to the large amounts of time my business was taking up from me. In my 30's, I was spending an extraordinary time still with The Silver Queen inc, and now also with the new health club business that me and my partner opened together. I was originally supposed to be more like a silent partner in Metroflex, but it became apparent pretty fast that I was needed for doing the computer system, helping form the business model, waiting on customers, etc, etc, etc. Needless to say my time was more contrained than ever now, no time for myself whatsover to do any art stuff. However, throughout both my 20's and 30's there were several things that I did accomplish that tied directly into my creativity. With my architectual hat, I came up with the design for our home in South Tampa. I also did the store layout design of Metroflex. My crowning achievement was my design of The new Silver Queen at 1350 West Bay Drive in Largo. Still not sure why no award was given for that. My creative juices were also ignited at The Silver Queen in several vehicles of my design. First and foremost was my complete design from scratch of our DBman computer system at the store, which later led to the development of our successful web site. I also developed our Silver Queen catalogs which are now distributed 3 times a year with over 250,000 distribution. I now do the photography, graphics work, page layouts, and all of the concepts in selling and generating dollars from items shown. I did and still do a lot of creative activity at The Silver Queen Inc, but there was always that "desire" in me to have an outlet for the more purer forms of artistic creation. I had an event occur in my life at age 35 that led me to start seeing a pyschiatrist for 3 years. I had always been a naysayer about "shrinks" prior to that, but to my surprise, I really did discover and learn a lot about myself in a very short time. In one of my final sessions, I was put under a mild state of hypnosis and was asked to describe what I was feeling in my body. At first, it was a blank, but then after a few minutes I felt this burning sensation in my hands. It finally came out of my subconscious mind from god only knows that I felt them wanting to touch and maybe sculpt something. I did not ignore this little "break through" in my therapy and decided to sign up for a sculpting class ASAP. I enrolled in a sculpting class in the early Summer of 2003 at the Gulf Coast Museum of Art. My first sculpture was pretty primative, but I decided that I wasn't going to give up so easily and that I was willing to stick with it and that over time I would acquire the skills and techniques to get good. I'm slowy progressing and am not rushing it. I think I have the potential to become very very good. Not sure if I'll ever be so good as to quit work and do sculpting full time, but I'm at least happy now that I'm not repressing my dreams anymore. I'm also very happy as well now lately with my photography. I am getting better all the time with it. I've seen so many indicators that I'm getting real good by the fact that my magazine ads, newspaper ads, and also internet listings continue now to reward me by awarding me far improved positions much better than I'd ever received previously. Also on a personal level, when I show home movies and videos edited in Apple Final Cut to my friends and family now, there are totally blown away by what they see. My latest toy is my Sony HDR-FX1 high definition video camera. This stuff is so much fun. I could see myself traveling around the world full time and just shooting with my Nikon digital camera and taking grand movies with my video cameras. I'm still only in my 40's, and I'm hoping for another 40-50 years to cultivate and achieve all of my goals and dreams. I'm working on a plan to spend more time with my art and a little less time being a slave to my business careers. Wish me luck! Greg |
"Metroflex Man" completed in 2004