Hello and welcome!
I wan't to share a little story about me and how I entered the art world, it all started in 2010
But we acctually have to go a lil bit further back in time, when things started to get really difficult, I was selfemployed as an IT consultant and my business was barely running in 2007-2008 mainly cause I had some really bad customers that took way to long to pay me for my work, like 3-6 months and for a little business like mine its not very good cause I had to pay my distributors money within my 14 days so evetually it resulted in cash upfront and that made it even harder as you can imagine.
So came the financial crisis and my customers was clearly influenced by that, in the way I did not get new orders or service hours with them, so on top of this we, me and my now ex-wife just moved into a house and only after a couple of months living there we discovered there was a dishwasher leaking under the floor and all way into the living room and so there were multiple toxic fungi spores there, which we could smell when they cut open the kitchen floor to further evaluate the damage of this. It was winter and rather cold and I got sick from these toxic spores for 3 months, middleear, lungs etc. We eventually moved out and that for a whole year as they renovated the place. Anyway, in half a year and my ex-wife had an accident where a truck with a load of stones hit her car from behind while she was stopped to turn left, on her way with our 4 yo son to kindergarden, I was called early in the morning by my dad that told me he would come and pick me up there was an accident, I was really afraid of what I was going to see when I arrived there. They were alive I was happy and shocked, we went to the hospital and they did various different examinations, but our son they just asked can you stand up and walk and that was it. My ex-wife was at the time a really bookworm and she could remember everything she read and every little detail, and soon after I felt she wasn't the same and she also confirmed she could not remember so well anymore and she had to take pain killers every day Ibuprofen, so she did and I had to close my company, which I did, in 2010, but in 2008 she got pregnant with our second son, and under some examinations they concluded there was a high amount protein in her urine which was very usual and therefor we were told not to go to Canada to see the other part of the family, we told the doctor we would get checked in Canada and see if everything was alright. When we arrived that was the first thing we did after dropping off our suitcases and saying hi, and the response from the Canadian hospital was rather shocking, they wanted to keep her there! I already was suspecting the Ibuprofen and so I asked the doctors there if that what was caused the high protein in her urine and they told me it could be very likely. So long story short, we had to leave after a week, insurrance paid the flight back and on first class! cause she had to be comfy and all, and omg that was nice! We went to doctors here in Denmark, and they didn't even want to look at papers from the Canadian doctors, so I thought omg! geez I will find a professor in this and send ask him about this, which I did he was from Lund university in Sweden and he had just published an article about Ibuprofen and kidney damages. I turned up with the article and suddenly wee! they wanted to admit that there was a possibility. Anyway, after biopsy and further examinations she was diagnosed with MCD minimal change disease, which is a permanent damage to your kidneys. So our son was born, and everything was going as good as could be, both a lil chopped off from ourselves and me well I couldn't find out were I was or why all this happend and to be honest I felt I was getting depressed and sometimes I thought that I everything was lost, could not sleep, could not be the good father I wanted to be, etc those were some of the thoughts that was going through my head. One evening I was really very sad and alone in the living room, and I was in front of my computer, I clicked on MS paint, opened an old photo of myself and started to paint on it just like it was giving me space from my emotional sadness to be focusing on something else actively kinda without thinking and yet, thinking in a different way, I put it on my fb and some people liked it, so I started doing more and more, and I created an art page, which later fb kinda ruined cause they wanted you to pay money for getting an audience, before everyone who liked my page got an update when I put something there, I was proud to get over 4000 likes in maybe a year or two. I did not have enough energy to be focusing on sales and it wasn't really the point though I found lots of art groups on there and a network of artists which acctually really liked what I was doing, and somehow I felt they wanted for me to sell my art and I also had people messaging me and encouraging me which I always will be very thankful for, cause I feel they supported me from the beginning, I learned alot about art and how art is a mirror of yourself, everything you do is, so alot of naval gazing and psychology, and what have you. I felt I could just be, without being anything or anyone in particular it was a good nice comfy feeling that I really needed to distance myself from my situation. Now other issues arrived, I felt suddenly I had to perform...To be better for every art work I did, to manage to be successful and that didn't really cling with the idea of just getting better myself, so there was a conflict within myself which I could not really solve, maybe afraid to be succesful or maybe just not wanting this. Cause I was getting more and more pulled away from my attention about myself and more into the attention of others. When I started back then I was using photoshop, procreate and artrage had almost just arrived on IOS and I had no seen any in the art groups making art on IOS and later it seem like it exploded with all kinda digital artists, I felt I was an inspiration to many out there with my work and that in itself paid me in feeling of doing something good. I was often asked questions about how I did it, and what media, and what software etc. I had no issue with telling people and going beyond that and almost teaching them howto.
So time went on and I felt more and more alone with myself and distanced from my ex-wife I had so much focus on fb and my art cause It was really the only place I prefered to be and the only place I prefered to post my art, I did try to sell on etsy, fineart america, satchii or whatever its called, and I just couldn't put the effort needed into it and so it was in my head because it wasn't important enough for me, therefor I stopped doing that. Now, I think I will stop writing, maybe I will continue later.
Sorry for my english, its rather danglish...
who ever read this, I hope you have sweet dreams zzz LOL
Bye for now
<3