Leopard Gaze

David Joyner

David’s memories of childhood consisted of exploring the woods behind a single wide mobile home, where his Mother raised him by herself. Sneaking up on frogs and talking to dragonflies were how he spent his days. There was the occasional armadillo scurrying across the prairie or mama deer with fawn foraging for acorns on the Florida sand. This inability to sit still and a love for animals is what began his journey through art. He was an awkward boy with illegible handwriting. This was a constant source of embarrassment. Ironically, the worse his penmanship became his drawings improved. An easel was his safe zone. All of his adventures into the wild enabled him to create animals onto a sketchpad with the same confidence his classmates would write the alphabet in a manner the teacher could decipher. Eventually he taught himself to paint.Every artistic mistake was a lesson. An eraser became a friend. David says that success by falling forward are always the best teachers. He still gets nervous staring at a blank canvas before a paint brush even touches it. This is also the most exciting, though because anything is possible in this world. His single mother demonstrated this daily. He continued to learn through stray pencil marks, hand cramps, and spilled paint. He is still amazed at a white canvas. After serving 4 years as a Hospital Corpsman in the United States Navy, David settled in the town he lived as a boy, Okeechobee, Florida with his wife Sally, son Bradley, daughter Olivia, 2 dogs, 5 cats and numerous bugs who still like to say hi from time to time. He owes all of this to a mother that told an 8 year old boy I believe you can draw and a wife who still believes he can.

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