My Heart Series
 Like so much about life with autism, little is understood of the feelings of those with autism.
 I’ve done a series of paintings to depict some of the emotions individuals with autism possess.

Art is an important part of my life.    From the time I was a little kid I’ve loved animation and cartoons. I’ve always liked doing things with art. My first kindergarten teacher says I was the “artist” of her class, that she knew even then that I was going to be an artist when I was older. I decided when I was about nine years old that I wanted to be a professional cartoonist and animator.

After I finished high school, I developed a cartoon called "It’s That Time of the Year" which was published in the local newspaper. I’ve always been interested in cartooning and historical dates, and this cartoon series combined both of those interests. When I moved away to go to school at CalArts, I discontinued the cartoon. I also enjoy painting. I enjoy drawing, too. I take a small sketchbook with me wherever I go. When I’m out with friends, sometimes one of them will suggest that I draw a cartoon, to see what I can come up with. When I get back to my computer, I sometimes take the original sketch and work it into a finished image. Here’s an example. Someone once said, “Hey, can you draw a picture of a kangaroo playing baseball?" Here I am sitting at a table in a restaurant, drawing the first sketch of the kangaroo. Here’s what the sketch looked like when I was finished with it. When I got home, I reworked the drawing on another piece of paper. Then I redrew and “cleaned up” the drawing. I used this new drawing as the basis for drawings of different layers of parts of the kangaroo that I scanned into the computer. Here I am drawing some of the parts to be scanned. Once everything was scanned in, I colored and assembled all the “parts” of the kangaroo cartoon and used the computer to add color to the image. Then I gave the final image detail and shading. Here it is!