Who was your most influential teacher? Why?

Hola Galeras,

I have not done one of these in a while.

So when I was a kid, I studied under a professor named Charles Rogers. He was a college art professor and I was like 13. My mom had dated him for a trip of the time and he and I he just gotta become like a family friend. So he still let me just kind of play in his studio and then he come in and like give me like pointers and tips and show me how to like. Let me sit with him at markets and do all types of stuff like that, so I was kind of exposed to the business before I was probably officially in the business. He had this like interesting thing about him where he was like. Do you feel like it’s done come back to it in about 20 minutes and then see what else you can do. He was unflappable about this and I remember being impressed but also like annoyed that I was never done with a painting. He was probably one of my first heroes. He had all these art books and science projects of potatoes and jars. To this day I still dream about his stucco house that he lived in next to the airport.. He was my first example of a living artist..

His house looks something like this. It was like a mixture of a illustration and a real house.

I think if I had ever had any questions about whether I wanted to be a real artist at that point always confirmed.

And since then, I’ve never looked back. I’ve known I wanted to be an artist since I was four and 40 years after that I’m still doing it.

His work could be described, kind of a mixture of futurism and cubism a little bit, but mostly just kind of futurism. He painted these like African sculptures and occasionally people, and he used to stretch his canvases and make his own frames. He is really kind of amazing..