A few months ago I sent an email to a friend that runs a few online/print publications and asked about maybe getting a small blurb published in an upcoming edition of one of her magazines. I was thinking maybe some cross promotion would be good and maybe get some free advertising for a couple shows I had coming up. Nothing major, maybe a paragraph and a couple pics. Just a total hail Mary, throw it to the wind and see what happens sorta thing. What I got back was silence. 5 days of it. I of course assumed the worst and decided to let the idea go and hope I hadn’t embarrassed myself too badly by assuming they would be interested in showing my art in their magazine. You have to get used to the idea of rejection if you want to be a professional artist because it happens. A lot.

Well, this was not one of those situations because eventually I did get a msg back and my friend hadn’t responded because she had been ill and also wanted to rethink my proposal a bit first. I was just happy to get a reply. What she said next spun my fucking head around and has put me on a path I never imagined. She asked if I would be interested in doing a book together instead? WTF?! Of course I would! Cue me losing exactly all of my shit entirely. I had dreamed of an art book secretly for years and here it was. The chance to actually do this thing I had asked for in my most private of thoughts but had never dared to voice. I was all in.

Having never done this before I had no idea what this would mean or what was to happen next. There has been press (interviews are fun but very fuckin weird), there has been a massive financial push in the form of a Kickstarter campaign that just yesterday brought us over 10k to add fuel to the fire and also there was the gut and soul wrenching process of digging through 8 years of work to find paintings that I didn’t hate that we could include in this 80 page coffee table monster. Any of you that is in any way artistic can probably imagine the cringing involved with such a tour of the past. The embarrassment is something I still feel as I type this. How did I sell those?! Anyways…I pushed through all this because I believe in what I do today and I hope on some level that this book inspires others.

Like I said, we just blew past our goal and now it is all becoming real. I am excited and I am nervous and I am proud all at the same time. I truly hope that when “Dodging Knives and Throwing Bullets” comes out people will get what I was trying to put into this thing. It is more than just an art book. It is a testimony to doing what you believe in and aiming higher than you thought you should. Taking a chance. Just trying to do what you love and jumping into the deep end. Because if you don’t believe in yourself then why should anyone else? I want you to know that even though I was scared and unsure of myself I took a chance and tried anyways. And if I can make this happen so can any single one of you.