Welcome to the
Voices of Recovery Virtual Gallery

I began using Marijuana heavily when I was sixteen. At that time in my life, drawing, and writing songs were my two main passions. In my mind, there was no way that I could do either particularly well without the assistance of marijuana. Unfortunately, that mindset continued for a very long time, and my dependence on marijuana turned into a twenty year block of my life that regretfully all seems a bit hazy. I’ve learned in recovery that I needed to spend all of that time, and have all of those experiences, to get to the point where I had enough and was ready to do the necessary work to be a sober person. 

 

I used marijuana daily from the time I was sixteen, until I got sober at thirty five. For a significant amount of that time it was my daily goal to be high from the moment I woke up, until I fell asleep, frequently waking up several times at night to smoke as well. I needed it to wake up, to feel like eating food, to have any interest in any of the activities needed for my day. I left great jobs for jobs that I knew would allow for this addiction. Worst of all, I was completely convinced that I couldn’t create art or music without marijuana. 

 

In 2018 my dog Pumpkin died suddenly. The loss opened my eyes to the fact, and fear, that I had no healthy way of coping with loss. I decided to go to therapy, and ultimately ended up jumping into working a twelve-step program. My sobriety date is January 1, 2019. One of the first things I realized upon getting sober was how deeply unfulfilled I was feeling. I was in my mid thirties, didn’t own a home, wasn’t in a serious relationship, and wasn’t making any real progress towards being an independent adult. I had wanted to be a husband and father from the time I was 18 years old, so I felt a bit dismayed that I had allowed myself to get sidetracked for close to twenty years away from those goals. 

 

I began diligently working on myself, my finances, and my independence. Starting my portrait business after COVID shut down the music and event business that I had co-founded was a huge step towards that independence. It helped me realize that not only could I make art without marijuana, but that the art I created in sobriety was at levels I didn’t think I was capable of doing. The work I did on myself in sobriety helped me to purchase a home, move on from the event business, pay off my debt, and ultimately led to me marrying one of my closest friends and the birth of our beautiful daughter. 

 

In 2022, my portrait work caught the attention of Theresa Clower, founder of The INTO LIGHT Project. INTO LIGHT is a nationwide artivism project working to fight the stigma of addiction through hand drawn portraits of people across the country that have died from the disease of addiction. 

 

I joined the project as an artist for the Delaware exhibition shown at the Delaware Art Museum. In the days following the birth of my daughter Jasper, I was working on my first portraits for the project. I was working directly with parents and siblings of Delawareans who died from addiction and working to capture them with my art. The way that sobriety and art came back together in my life has been a powerful force in my own recovery. I was featured in Out & About Magazine, and have completed over 100 portraits for The INTO LIGHT Project, my portrait business has been a blessing for my family for six years.