5/6/2019 - Graduate Letter of Intention

This may be curious coming from someone applying for a Masters in Photography, but I always knew I wanted to be a painter growing up. I originally enrolled at SCAD for my undergraduate to become one with aspirations that there was something hidden in my works that would connect with people. In choosing SCAD, I decided against life paths that involved college football scholarships and ignored the advice down more safe walk ways. In my mind I was going to be a painter.

Through painting, I’ve adapted a motif for myself that the visual is always going to be inspired by outside influences. From an audio inspiration perspective, I would listen to pieces over and over to create an art piece allowing one art form to inspire another. From an early age on, every personal life moment I had was thrown into my written and visual works as both a true identity of myself being formed and as a mask to protect the insecure and vulnerable parts of myself.

For the 4 years of my undergrad, I worked 40 hours a week while going to school full time. I chose to do what had to be done to survive one day at a time. I paid my way through school through the kindness of strangers, earned scholarships, hard work and faith. Working patiently towards a goal is all I know in life. Sometimes that included sleeping in my car to get an extra half hour of sleep. Sometimes that involved going hungry to pay for supplies. Sometimes that involved going straight to class smelling of food and bleach from the food service job I just left moments prior. But I did all so I could survive so one day I could be a painter but learning everything I could about what came before me.

Something shifted in myself after 2 years into my undergrad. Perhaps it came from a traumatic life moment centered on discovering identity that still is seen in my works 16 years later. Perhaps it was a death in my mind as I began to answer the question for myself, “Who are you?”. But I was no longer sure of personal success. I was no longer convinced I was to be painter at all. I grappled with the concept of who is to say what was good or bad art. There is only art that is true to the individual artist. Art either connects or is forgotten to the viewer, but there will always be something that connects with the artist. I felt I was learning techniques when I should have been learning my identity as well. I felt confined to perimeters that were limiting emotional connection and personal growth. Perhaps it was chalked up to being young, but I gave up the only thing I was sure about from insecurity and self-belief.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but painting in a traditional sense died for me then as I saw it as something lonely and pragmatic to endure. I only did one final painting post college during another major growth life event. It was of a forest fire on wood panel. I gave it away knowing it was my to be my last and I was setting fire to the forest I had nurtured for so long. That painting was a formative end to a dream. I was done. Am done. It was the best way to end a trade. I feel painting for me ran it’s course. It ended with My Internal Khos Externalized and Realized. But I didn’t know that then.

For the rest of my undergrad, I switched to graphic design. I felt it would better prepare myself for a career out of college while moving me forward to answering questions of what I was seeking in the world through my painting major; universal connections. The main driving points to graphic design and branding are visually connecting a brand to a consumer along with the dissemination and implementation of information in an aesthetically and efficient manner. This process is ever changing as technology constantly changes the landscape of how that is implemented from computer screen, billboards, and more importantly to your cellular phone. If I wanted to be a better painter I had to learn to be a graphic designer.

9 years ago, I began self-learning photography due to a growing need within the graphic design profession. I experienced hours of time wasted searching for stock photography that could have been better utilized photographing product photography, lifestyle shots or textures yourself. Through contributing to iStock for 10 years, I basically got a free technical training in the mechanics of photography while also supplementing income which lead to various art series for charity, global fashion photography and in a way made me an official Disney artist. I believed adding photography would enhance my career and value. In many ways it did, in others it created a split image of confusion on who I am.

Looking back at my 14 years industry experience, I can attest that I became an accomplished visual designer within my own right. I worked 8 years designing for Coca-Cola in packaging and branding. I spent 3 years fundamentally shifting the perception of the global bridal company Alfred Angelo as the Senior Creative Manager. I adapted from beverage marketing to fashion visual design back to becoming a production artist for companies working with saw blades and weekly circulars which in the landscape of branding maybe somewhere I will be remembered as part of the team that built things. I believed I had a solid career path behind me and in front of me. Professionally I defined brands while pushing my own artist identity in the background.

In hindsight, I can’t help but think now that graphic design was always designed as a young person’s profession. In the marketplace, employers look to find who can do the most for the least amount of pay. Corporate politics will always factor in one’s success and failures. Most importantly there is a general lack of understanding the importance of a visual design team to a brand. I was trained that being adaptable was important, but it also becomes a double-edged sword towards the career paths you set for yourself. Perhaps if I had told myself in college that the profession I was setting out on would require me to be a graphic designer/animator/photographer/Art Director/Creative Director/UX Designer/fashion designer/teacher/student/pro-juggler I might have found myself choosing a career path where I could master one thing and do it well. Where I feel I am at career-wise feels like a circular progression has occurred from fledgling success to the inevitable fading back to an anonymous expendable professional who cannot even land an interview. Identity is important within the marketing world, just as long as it is not your own. But as some will find through their self-discovery, it is that as the number of brands you work for will change you carry your own personal brand and it is important to continually invest in growing that.

I believe I have hit the crossroads where it is time to set aside a predestined career path and focus back on fulfilling the dreams I’ve set aside over the years. Corporately I’ve experienced company bankruptcy at the expense of employees, disregard of employee’s well-being in a contract vs. full-time employee role, and bittersweet endings where I tell myself I would have handled that differently than others if I was in the position to change things. I am unemployed for the 3rd time in 2 years and I cannot see being a jack of all trades and a master of none as either fulfilling nor what is responsible towards my professional visual artist career path. My career path has failed me where I now have the choice to either fade to obsoletion in a world where protections of employees fade away for a bottom line or let go of fear and redefine for myself what it means to be successful.

All these years later, it is apparent to me that I never lost the desire to be that painter who searches for universal connections. What I didn’t expect is for photography to be the evolution of that desire to paint. How I process my images is very much in line with oil painting techniques where layer upon layer is built until the finished product. What photography has done is brought back my fine art background naturally without the loneliness and pragmatism that sunk my painting career.

I approach every piece as a beautiful layered lie for viewers to choose “Choose Your Own Adventure” in how deep you want to go to interpret it’s meaning. You can look at the surface and be completely content with the image presented to you, but I also invite to go further down the rabbit hole to decipher the why and the how through audio and supplemental writings to help bring about the universal truths I am looking for in life. I have two main series that I have spent 8 years working on. One tackles embracing individuality and acceptance through uniqueness. The other series is a psychological Divine Comedy using Hell, Purgatory and Heaven as allegories to processing the stages of mental trauma.

What I am looking for in a graduate degree in Photography is a breaking of a chain in insecurity in what should be the beginning of my formative pinnacle years of my career. Self-doubt put me on a path where I spent 14 years professionally trying to find a voice of my own while being told I should not have one. I cannot accept not having one as I move forward in life when I have to believe that I am still viable and worth something. Everything builds unto itself and I feel that I am becoming a better artist based on what I believe were the appropriate steps to take in life. You do whatever it takes to succeed. Hundreds of resumes sent to no response is demoralizing and degrading, but it teaches you a great deal of humility and knowledge that something is fundamentally broken in the translation between employee and employer. Every year you are forced to adapt or die but it does not have to be from other’s decision. Perhaps it is here when I have to say that I no longer have faith in knowing who has my best interests at heart. It is here that I impose a suicide from one path of control to refocus on what fulfills me and makes me happy vs. thankless days.

We are forever learning through others and I look forward to being pushed towards the direction of success through graduate studies after experiencing the world through a younger lens. When I decided on graphic design, I told myself that I eventually wanted to be a teacher after being in the corporate world. 14 years is enough time to see where I could make a difference in helping others in their formative years on their own journeys. 14 years was long enough to see dreams come true and dreams crushed along the way. I feel there is still a great deal for me to learn and his new journey eliminates the predictability of being discounted and misunderstood. As I go through another day of unemployment, it seems more and more apparent to me that it is time to choose my own adventure and I am submitting my portfolio for your review with the last 10 dollars to my name in faith. I have to believe that as one path is finished, another has only just begun to becoming the painter I always wanted to be within a brave new world of my own creation. I started my own photography business 8 years ago and on my anniversary I am deciding to say goodbye to one life for another.