The first art competition I participated in was for an art scholarship for Seniors in High School looking to further their education in Art. As an amateur artist, I won with two realistic drawings, one of my two best friends and another of a colored drawing of a pile of buttons. It wasn’t until utilizing the received scholarship at Howard Payne University, I learned how to paint. Up until then the extent of my talents were expressed through drawing.

Simultaneously, was a calling to Africa. During Senior year of high school and throughout university, I took several trips to Africa, including one where I ended up in a South African hospital for a week and a half and had to undergo surgery.

During the time at Howard Payne, the opportunity to participate in The Stars of Texas art show arose. Through this opportunity I was able to take the People’s Choice Award, for a realistic painting of a photo I took of a boy in Mozambique, named “Heavyweight”.

For our senior year at the university, the art students had to spend the last semester organizing an art show and present pieces for the public to come and view.

Because there was no personal desire in pursuing a carrier in Teaching and I had to choose between the only two majors the university offered for Art, Art Education and Art Communication, communication was the only option.

Low and behold, after two miserable years of working as a graphic designer and hating it, an offer came for a part time art teaching job at a private school. It didn’t take long to discover, not only was it a joy to teach, it was also a natural skill, and I spent the next 5 years teaching.

In 2015, the call to return to Africa continued to press on my heart, and when the opportunity came to go to Ghana, it was an easy decision. But this trip was unlike the ones before, which were only stepping stones. This trip was the beginning of the end. It led me to the destination of the calling God placed on my soul long ago.

It was during the short-term trip to the remote town of Kete-Krachi, that a new love was born inside my soul, and a deep sense of belonging. There was a familiarity in a place I had never been, yet it called to me and said, “you are home.” Thus, after several more short-term trips, squeezed in during breaks from teaching, the decision was made to stop saying goodbye to the Ghanaian family I had so deeply grown to love, and I made the big move to the small town in the Oti Region of Ghana to simply be present with the ones I had grown to love so deeply over the past 3 years.

Selling artwork didn’t really come into the picture until the idea came up that I could use it as a means to raise funds for living in Ghana. It started with simple and fast paced multicolored blending of animals, then evolved into much more realistic subjects, now with even more thoughtful color blending than when it started.

Now, on every trip taken to the US, a majority of the time is spent either painting, working on an online art show, or just recently participating in the Rockport/Fulton Market Day.