I got started just like any other kid who loved art. I drew a lot, had no idea what I was doing, but I had fun. Senior year of high school, I decided to take AP Art with my best friend—and when my portfolio came back with a top score and I swept up multiple awards at the Senior Art Show, I realized I might have a career ahead of me.

I graduated in 2010 and started college the same year, pursing a Bachelors of Fine Art at Southern Utah University—the only school that, as far as I could tell, had a professor in the art program who knew anything about digital art. There, I received a classical art training with a curriculum heavy in realistic figure drawing and oil painting. SUU isn’t one of the nationally renowned art schools in the US, but it was exactly what I needed to get my start. I graduated Magna Cum Laude and recipient of the Outstanding Senior award for the Illustration department.

After I graduated, it took over six-hundred job applications before I received my first and only offer. In August of 2014, I moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota to work as an artist for King Show Games, a developer of digital slot machine games. For me, it was a dream job: I was making art full time and getting paid to do it. Most of the other employees were nerdy twenty-somethings like me, and over the six years that I spent there, they became like family.

Then COVID-19 hit. For a few months we thought we were fine, and then in the span of a single week in March of 2020 the entire company was moved remote. I liked the change; it let me spend more time with my two cats at home, and it gave me more time to pack my things for my upcoming move to a new apartment.

On May 29th, the entire company was called into a mandatory meeting without warning. We learned that, due to industry-wide shutdowns, in order to survive as a company KSG would have to lay off two-thirds of its employees. I remember how badly I was trembling as I waited to receive an email notifying me of my termination. A minute or two later, I did.

I cried a lot over the next few days. I was in shock and at a loss for what to do. Just a week later, I was supposed to move into my new apartment and take over a lease I could no longer afford. With a lot of help from my family, I decided to break the new lease and move back home to Utah, where I could pick up the pieces of my life in peace. My mom flew out to Minneapolis to help me tackle the move, and together we packed up my two cats and drove cross-country for the second time.

I had a lot of time to think during that drive. I had loved my job at King Show, but I had been working myself up eventually quitting to pursue my dream of becoming an independent artist. I hated the idea of starting fresh at some new company when I thought King Show would be my last. So I decided to take a gamble: though I was nowhere near ready to make the switch, I would spend the next few months learning to support myself with my own art.

It’s 2021 now. Every day still feels like a gamble whether this little dream of mine will succeed or fail. But if you’re here, reading my story, I thank you for your support. It really means the world to me.