1995 • age 0
born in tennessee.
no idea this was going to happen.
1997 • age 2
moved to temecula, california.
2000 • age 5
my mom took me to see a diego rivera exhibition.
i couldn’t stop looking at one of the paintings.
i wanted to know what it felt like.
so i reached out and touched it.
a security guard immediately yelled at me.
i started crying.
looking back,
i think that was the moment i decided i wanted to become an artist.
2003 • age 8
moved to atlanta.
reading didn’t come naturally.
drawing did.
sketchbooks quietly became a second language.
my mom studied art history.
she took me to museums.
walked me through galleries.
made art with me whenever she could.
my dad was a software engineer.
he taught me that almost every problem has a solution if you’re willing to keep thinking.
between the two of them,
they quietly gave me everything i needed before i even knew i would need it.
i’ve been trying to make the most of that gift ever since.
thank you, mom.
thank you, dad.
2007 • age 12
convinced my parents to let me buy a $50 screen printing kit online.
the prints were terrible.
the shirts weren’t much better.
i immediately wanted to make another one.
looking back,
that was probably the point of no return.
2008–2012 • ages 13–17
spent nearly every free hour making art.
painted late into the night.
woke up a few hours later for school.
did it again the next day.
filled sketchbook after sketchbook.
painted on scrap wood.
cardboard.
anything i could get my hands on.
i wasn’t waiting for the right materials.
i just wanted to keep making work.
somewhere in there,
i broke my wrist.
my ankle.
my toe.
knocked myself out riding off a 12 foot ledge.
picked up a few concussions skateboarding.
i figured i had probably used up all my luck.
little by little,
art became less of an interest.
and more of an obsession.
2012 • age 17
by then,
i already knew what i wanted to spend the rest of my life doing.
looking back,
what a gift that was.
left high school.
art school wasn’t financially possible.
so i decided to build my own education.
i became obsessed with learning.
i studied every artist i could find.
every interview.
every documentary.
every studio.
every process.
every philosophy.
i wanted to understand how artists built a life around their work.
art had been my main focus for years.
now i needed to build a life around it.
i wasn’t trying to make one good piece.
i wanted to make enough work that good pieces became inevitable.
2013 • age 18
started painting walls.
learned that ideas change once they become larger than you are.
began saying yes to projects that felt slightly out of reach.
2014 • age 19
painted a 100 × 22 foot mural for living walls.
the largest work i had made at the time.
woke up every morning with hives all over my chest.
i threw up every morning.
finished it in 11 days during the atlanta summer.
created five 15 foot paintings for an original ballet production by choreographer wade walthall.
the production was built around the paintings, which became the visual environment for the performance.
realized paintings could exist beyond the gallery wall.
2015 • age 20
included in a group exhibition at the high museum of art.
two paintings entered the museum’s permanent collection.
assisted michael lin on utah sky at the high museum of art.
traveled to new york city with michael rooks.
i’m grateful he invited me.
visited brian donnelly’s studio.
spent the afternoon at a james turrell exhibition at david zwirner.
i left seeing art differently.
on the flight home,
there was a loud bang.
the captain told us one of the engines had failed.
everyone on the plane laughed.
i remember thinking,
well…
i guess this is it.
we landed safely.
that was a long day.
back to work.
2016 • age 21
first solo museum exhibition.
created an entire exhibition from the ground up, including:
- eight 6 × 6 ft paintings
- three 8 ft sculptures
it changed the way i thought about making art.
one week after my first solo museum exhibition,
i packed everything i owned into my car.
left atlanta.
drove to los angeles with my best friend sebastien.
didn’t know what would happen.
just knew i needed to be there.
2016–2020 • ages 21–25
worked as a studio assistant to cleon peterson.
helped fabricate paintings, sculptures, installations, exhibitions, and public artworks.
got to travel and make art in places i never imagined i’d go.
toulouse, france.
taipei, taiwan.
met crystal.
the love of my life.
she believed in me through every version of this journey.
and somehow still does.
spent four years learning how a professional studio operates from the inside.
an education i couldn’t have gotten anywhere else.
2018–2020 • ages 23–25
created large murals for six seasons of nbc’s the voice.
two murals were featured in emmy nominated episodes.
continued balancing television production, studio work, and my own practice.
2020 • age 25
the pandemic brought the world to a halt.
i decided to treat the next few years as a period of research.
not just into art.
into myself.
i questioned everything.
followed every idea that felt worth exploring.
most of the work never left the studio.
looking back,
those years changed everything.
2025 • age 30
years of experimenting finally started connecting.
the work began feeling like it belonged together.
i started trusting my own instincts.
2026 • age 31
a reset.
after years of commissions, fabrication, murals, television work, and collaborative projects…
i decided it was time to focus entirely on building my own body of work.
launched lonelyartworld as the home for everything moving forward.
back to work.
current version
version 31.0
status: building.
what comes next?
more paintings.
more sculptures.
more drawings.
keep showing up.
still making work.
hopefully for a long time.
thanks for visiting.
check back in a few years.
it’ll probably look very different.
no idea this was going to happen.
