I had no idea what I was doing.
None.
No training.
No roadmap.
No plan.
Just a bucket of paint, two brushes, and a woman pointing at a door saying:
“Can you make this door look like this photograph?”
I said yes. I had absolutely no business saying yes. But I wasn’t going to say no.
At the time, I was working in a shipping warehouse as an International Auditor. Checking every package that landed in my hands for compliance and dispatching trucks for deliveries across the United States.
What I was really doing was trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life.
The community college didn’t give me answers. Just an associate’s degree that meant absolutely nothing and a growing sense that I was supposed to be somewhere else… I just didn’t know where. Or how.
Then I got a job as a painter’s assistant at a theater. Which mostly meant I was a glorified dishwasher. Cleaning buckets and brushes while watching real artists work as I tried to stay out of the way.
Until that one fateful day, crunch time hit.
They were short on painters and suddenly I was being aske dot hold a brush for a different reason other than cleaning it.
A few hours later, the charge painter who asked me to paint the door came back.
She looked at what I had done.
Paused.
And said: “Wow… you did it. It looks like the photo.” And it was loaded into a truck still wet with paint and my sweat because I had no idea I could that! But then I did it!
That moment changed my entire life.
That one reckless yes became:
A 25-year career painting for theater, movies, television and live entertainment all over the United States. Hundreds of sets and a life built behind the scenes.
And just like that, I went from cleaning brushes…to building worlds.
What I didn’t realize at the time was when you start painting worlds for people to get lost in, you start to see reality differently.
You realize:
Everything is constructed. Everything is felt. Everything is designed.
Even your life.
Continue the story…
→ The life we built around the world