I think I was around 7 or 8 when I first got into art as a pornographer. I had this friend, Chip, who was a year or so older and we rode the school bus together. One day he showed me a men's magazine he had found in the trash somewhere. At that age I had a natural curiosity about women's bodies but I didn't get nearly excited as Chip seemed about the pictures of nude women.
One day I had a brainstorm. I put a sheet of typing paper over a page from a Wonder Woman comic book, put it against a window so the light would show through and traced the image of the superhero without clothes. I did 5 of these, cut them out into squares about the size of comic book panels and put a staple in the stack. The next day the feverish Chip gave me a nickel for them. For the next few weeks I was searching every comic book I could find for women in tight fitting clothes and letting the nickels roll in.
Then one day my father walked in on me as I was up against the window doing a tracing. It was supper time and rather than call me I suppose he decided to investigate why I spent so much time in my room with the door closed. He never said a word to me about it and I never traced again.
In school I did as many poster projects as I could because I loved the art work so much. I did not take any art courses or really pursue the studies but it seemed a lot of my friends were artists. In high school my friend Frank Smart was into painting 
and later was passionate about sculpture, thinking about a career in the field.
In college I would often go to the studio with Terry Manke and watch him work 
while I worked on my writings.John Presser also worked there but I loved most going to his house off campus. He would paint while I worked on poems. We would drink wine and discuss theories of art and literature while I filled the room with pipe smoke.
John and Terry both worked with acrylics at that time and I later experimented with it trying to emulate their styles. 
A lot of what I painted at that time came out of a fascination with Carlos Castaneda's Yaqui shaman named Don Juan Matus tried to teach him how to look at a tree by seeing only its shadows.
In the 90's I discovered the world of oil paints. I loved the fluidity of sculpting on canvas with colors feeding into each other. I never became technically proficient in art but did sell a few paintings and received commission for some "house" portraits. I was never really proud of my work and did it primarily for just the joy of doing it. I suppose the greatest compliment my paintings received was when some I had stored in a barn at the Wilkinson farm were taken.
In 2005 I discovered digital painting and have been exploring that medium for the last few years. When my parents were dealing with I did one of my favorites just for them, titled This Cup. 