Ten Years of Making: The Practice of Becoming an Artist
Every finished painting represents hundreds of hours that no one ever sees.
The final image is often what people encounter first. The exhibition, the finished canvas, the photograph shared online. What remains invisible are the years of experimentation, uncertainty, failed attempts, changing directions, and quiet moments spent returning to the studio.
People often ask how an artist develops a style or discovers what they want to say through their work.
I believe the answer begins with one simple lesson:
The most important skill an artist can develop is learning how to continue making.
Over the past decade, my practice has changed in ways I never could have predicted. I have moved between disciplines, explored questions of identity and consciousness, exhibited work throughout Louisiana, collaborated with other artists, helped build creative spaces, and developed two interconnected but distinct practices.
Looking back, I do not see a straight path.
I see a collection of choices to keep returning to the work.
2015: Beginning Again
Moving back home to Kaplan from Lafayette marked the beginning of a new chapter in my life.
While attending the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, I began shifting my focus from music education toward visual art. This transition was not simply about changing mediums. It was about discovering a different way of understanding the world.
Rather than only learning how to create images, I became interested in why humans create, how we communicate experiences, and what images can reveal about ourselves.
2016: Finding the Figure
Figure drawing became a foundational part of my artistic development after studying with Camille Banuchi at Achilles Print Studio.
This period introduced a level of discipline and observation that continues to influence my work today.
I completed my first Inktober challenge, participated in my earliest public exhibitions, and began developing a commitment to regular studio practice outside of a traditional academic path.
The figure became more than a subject.
It became a way to explore identity, emotion, and human experience.
2017: Questions Without Easy Answers
This was one of the most difficult years of my life.
Personal experiences led me to question ideas surrounding consciousness, perception, identity, and the relationship between the internal and external world.
Those questions eventually shaped my decision to pursue psychology, later completing a Bachelor of Science focused on research methods.
Although my academic direction changed, art remained an important way of processing and exploring these ideas.
Many of the questions that emerged during this period continue to influence my work today.
2018: A Visual Language Begins to Emerge
During this period, my work began developing recurring visual elements.
Expressive linework, symbolic imagery, organic forms, and relationships between figures and environments became increasingly present.
I was still experimenting and searching, but the foundation of my visual language was beginning to take shape.
2019: Learning to Trust the Work
As I continued creating, I began receiving commissions, selling original artwork, and building relationships with viewers who connected with my work.
This period taught me an important lesson:
Artistic growth and professional growth rarely happen at the same pace.
Learning to trust the work required patience, consistency, and the willingness to continue even when the direction was unclear.
2020: A Year of Transition
I graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, summa cum laude, during one of the most uncertain periods many people experienced.
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted traditional creative paths and forced many artists to reconsider how they worked and sustained themselves.
My background in psychology became increasingly connected to my artistic practice, strengthening my interest in memory, identity, perception, and human experience.
2021: Learning Sustainability
Health challenges and personal circumstances changed how I approached creativity.
Instead of measuring success only through productivity, I began thinking about sustainability.
What does it mean to build a creative practice that can continue for decades?
How can an artist create work while also creating a life capable of supporting that work?
These questions became central to my development.
2022: Returning to the Figure
The transition into acrylic painting marked a major shift in my practice.
The work became increasingly focused on figurative imagery, botanical forms, and psychological landscapes.
I began exploring how natural environments could function as metaphors for internal experiences.
This period also included continued involvement in Lafayette’s arts community through exhibitions and collaborative projects.
2023: First Major Milestones
2023 marked an important transition from developing artist to exhibiting professional.
I presented my first solo exhibitions:
Wildflowers at Alamo Artist Studios
The Human Condition at Gallery R
I also exhibited alongside Scott Finch at Frameworks Gallery in Baton Rouge.
Receiving the ArtSpark Individual Artist Grant from the Acadiana Center for the Arts further supported the continued development of my practice.
More than anything, this year reinforced the importance of years spent creating before recognition arrives.
The exhibitions were not sudden beginnings.
They were the result of countless unseen hours.
2024: Expanding Beyond the Studio
Following my first solo exhibitions, my practice expanded beyond individual artworks and toward larger questions of community, collaboration, and artistic infrastructure.
I continued exhibiting throughout Acadiana, including participation in exhibitions such as:
- Systems
- (un)common
- Cur Non
- 61st Annual Juried National Competition at the Masur Museum of Art
I also became increasingly involved in organizing and supporting creative opportunities for other artists through ARCHIVES Exhibitions and collaborative projects.
This year reminded me that being an artist is not only about making objects.
It is also about contributing to the communities that allow creativity to exist.
2025: Defining Two Creative Practices
2025 became a year of clarification.
I recognized that my portrait commissions and contemporary fine art practice had developed into two distinct but connected paths.
Through the launch of LRT Studio, portraiture became a dedicated commission studio focused on preserving people, relationships, and memories through heirloom artwork.
My fine art practice continued exploring psychological states, memory, transformation, and the relationship between internal experience and the natural world.
The separation allowed both practices to become stronger.
One preserves human stories.
The other investigates them.
This year also marked continued growth through exhibitions, awards, curatorial projects, presentations, and expanded involvement in Acadiana’s creative community.
2026: Continuing the Practice
A decade after beginning this journey, I no longer think of becoming an artist as something that eventually arrives.
It is something continually practiced.
The studio remains a place of questions, experimentation, and discovery.
The work continues to evolve because I continue to evolve.
The Story Continues
Looking back, the paintings tell only part of the story.
Every artwork contains years of decisions, doubts, experiments, failures, and persistence that remain invisible once the finished piece enters the world.
The greatest lesson of the past decade has been simple:
Making art is not about waiting until you know exactly what you are doing.
It is about continuing long enough for the answers to reveal themselves.
The practice continues.