Just when you think you know what you're doing ...

I thought I knew what my "style" was as an artist. Turns out, I was wrong.

I'd made black and white images for years, leaning into art I made with ink and typewriters. I affixed a label to myself like an action figure.

"Self-taught ARTIST! Now with kung-fu grip!!!"

But in January 2021, I turned my artist's lens back on the machine that helped me create art. I started with my own typewriter, a study of the metal-and-rubber concoction that I'd stared at for so many short stories and poems. I painted it on my iPad. Put it up on Instagram.

Two days later I got a message from a stranger in Chicago.

"Where can I buy that?"

Over the past six months I've painted colorful digital portraits of people's typewriters all over the world. So far I've made almost 100 this year. It's culminating in a giant mural of a typewriter in downtown Los Angeles' Arts District later this week.

So the lesson here is, don't label yourself and set yourself on a shelf to preserve your self-created packaging.

You're not a collectible. You're an action figure.

Action.

Get out and make stuff.